


Two Truths and a Lie

by 47tuc



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Eventual Smut, HEA, I promise, M/M, More angst, Pining, S7 Spoilers, Slow Burn, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Violence, academic au, all of the pining, and keith secretly LOVES IT, but that's it, dating apps, i can't even with these two, nothing happens, post-doc Shiro, s7 voltron, shiro is a total dork, there's a punch, waiter keith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-06-24 12:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15630486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/47tuc/pseuds/47tuc
Summary: Wherein Shiro, planet-science prodigy and all-around workaholic, is dragged onto the dating scene kicking and screaming by his stupid friends.“Oh, don’t worry, there’s an app for that!”





	1. Operation Punk

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my self-indulgent voyage into writing a long Sheith fic. Please leave feedback, it gives me life.

A _knock, knock, knock_ from the hall ripped Shiro’s eyes from his computer screen, not realizing how dry they’d become until trying to focus on something _other_ than the monochrome lines of his manuscript. He turned and squinted at the silhouette of his intruder, trying to blink them into focus.

“Jesus, Shiro, how are you still working? You are officially off the _hook_! And... dude, turn some lights on, you’re becoming a creepy cave… type…  person,” Hunk accused as he flicked the switch by Shiro’s office door, his brows raised in judgement.

Shiro huffed out an impatient breath, blinking at the harsh fluorescent lighting raining down on his already abused eyes. _When did it get so dark outside?_ “Hunk, there’s still--hold on a sec,” he replied, quickly swiveling around in his chair at the _ping_ of an incoming e-mail.

Hunk sighed. “I guess you didn’t become the youngest ever recipient of the Jansky Fellowship for nothin’, huh?”

“Mmm,” Shiro replied absently, re-entering robot mode as his attention focused squarely back to the screen, the only sound in his office the click-clack of his fingers dancing across his laptop keys.

Despite Shiro’s dismissal, he heard Hunk’s footsteps cross the threshold of his office door and felt the stale air shift around him. “Dude, aren’t you going to celebrate?” Hunk asked from behind him, undeterred, his arms crossed over his barrel chest.

Shiro sighed, turning to meet Hunk’s eyes. If _anyone_ could understand his situation, it’d be Hunk: they were both recruited to this department at similar stages in their research careers, the established faculty eager to bring on budding astrophysicists who specialized in discovering new planetary systems. Now a few years in, they were both well on their way to making their mark in the field, but there was still so much to do to advance to the next level. “Hunk, you know I have to submit this paper tomorrow. Now’s _really_ not the time--”

“Nope, nuh-uh, you are _not_ doing this now--”

“Hunk, I’ll never get a professorship if I don’t--”

“Dude, _STOP!_ ”

Shiro’s lips snapped shut at Hunk’s barked words, surprise widening his eyes.

Hunk shook his head and sighed. _Again_. “I know your work is important to you, man, but you have to live a little, too. When’s the last time you went out?”

Shiro looked away to hide the embarrassment leaching color into his cheeks as he realized he could barely remember. “Does that really matter?”

“Yes! When, Dr. Takashi Shirogane?”

Shiro gasped. “Are you _full-naming_ me?”

“Don’t change the subject! When?”

“I… I don’t know. Your birthday.”

Hunk scoffed. “Shiro! That was six months ago!” Hunk shook his head and crowded over him, an ominous bringer of fun. “Alright, get up,” he urged, gesturing at Shiro impatiently with his hands.

“What? No, Hunk--”

Hunk hefted Shiro out of his chair and placed his hands on his shoulders, giving him little shoulder shakes that punctuated his more emphatic words, “Bullshit. You were just awarded a _thousand_ _orbits_ on Hubble and many _more_ thousands of dollars in grant money to make little research _babies_ with the images. We’re _drinking._ Hey, PIDGE! Get in here!” Hunk let go of Shiro to knock on the adjacent wall.

“Damnit, Hunk--”

Wheels screeching down the hall precluded Pidge’s arrival, the small genius still seated in her giant desk chair as she appeared at his office door. Pidge assessed the scene the two of them made with narrowed eyes, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Uhhh… what, Hunk? I’m sorta in the middle of something?--”

“Operation Punk has reached phase _two_ , Pidge,” Hunk spoke in a stage whisper as he gripped Shiro’s wrist in an intractable hold.

As Pidge gasped and bolted for her things with little thought to her beloved desk chair now squealing as it spun, abandoned in the hallway, Shiro knew he was in for it.

\----

After a pit-stop home to shower and change, Hunk and Pidge dragged him to the nearby watering hole that had an eclectic mix of beers on tap, a never-ending selection of 90’s classic rock, and an outdoor patio that, at one time in the not-so-distant past, saw Shiro on summer weekends.

He sat as directed by his friends at one of the tables, taking in the nostalgic sensations of the balmy evening that warmed his skin. He absorbed the murmurs of nearby conversations and the smell of unfortunate drink spills on the surrounding patio concrete that told Shiro the bar was having a pretty busy night. So close to campus, this place was a beacon of sorts, dragging the academic moths to its open-’til-three-AM flame. He’d been here plenty of times before but the memories felt distant, like dreams that dissipated shortly after waking. _Has it really been... six months?_

_Where did the time go?_

The trio shared drink menus, Shiro scanning the draught list. He decided he could appease the masses by having _one_ beer before returning to work.

“Well hey, man, congratulations on another successful observing proposal! All that stress was worth it, huh?”

Shiro nodded at Hunk, thinking back to the many pizzas ordered to his office and the many more sleepless nights needed to get the Hubble proposal in on time.

“Man, why can’t they just give you the telescope time instead of making you write proposals for it? Drives me nuts,” Pidge complained.

“Everyone wants a piece of the pie, Pidge, so they have to pick the best research ideas--”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled. While Pidge was also a member of their astronomy department, she worked more on the IT side of things.

In order to get the best data, Shiro had needed to appeal to the Hubble Space Telescope committee that was in charge of allocating the telescope’s time, writing out in detail the objects in space he’d wanted to capture and how _he,_ specifically, was the most capable and qualified researcher.

The committee sorted through hundreds, if not thousands, of observing proposals before choosing their favorites. It was almost like applying for a job, except instead of a salary and benefits, Shiro got something even better: astronomical images. Combining these proposals with his already steady workload and job duties, he’d been spread pretty thin.

“I remember Shiro passing out in the upstairs conference room and drooling all over the desk!”

Hunk snorted as Shiro fired back in mock defensiveness. “Hey, cut me some slack, it was day three without sleep!”

“Let’s vow to never do that again, okay?” Hunk replied, smiling as Pidge and Shiro nodded in agreement, but they all knew the truth: it would happen again. And again. _And again._

Such was the life of an academic.

A breeze gently swayed the string lights affixed all around the patio and ruffled the white tuft of Shiro's hair. He leaned back and recalled the anxiety, the fatigue, the anguish of trying to write the perfect proposal; he was loathe to admit it, but he’d needed to take a step back. That last proposal took a lot out of him, and hearing about the results months later meant he could _finally_ breathe.

Not that he’d ever tell Hunk.

He tried to meditate away his stress in the balmy summer heat, barely listening to Pidge and Hunk’s usual banter as he tapped out a quiet rhythm on his lap to an invisible song. His mind wandered despite his best efforts--did he even listen to music anymore? What was his favorite song? Should he get noise-cancelling headphones to help him work harder? What was left to do on his current manuscript? Anxiety still riddled through him, the sudden _need_ to hasten back to work changing the pace of his drumming. If he could just check off one more box, finish one more thing, write one more section--he tried to batten down the feeling, but old habits die hard.

It wasn’t until Shiro heard a short but husky voice at their table that he realized he’d closed his eyes at some point, startling him into an upright and locked position. His eyes travelled to the source of the noise; he forced down a gasp as he glanced up at their sleek, black-clad server. He’d never seen him before: the man had a smaller build than Shiro, but he was wiry,  almost cat-like, graceful and lean from the curve of his neck to the taper of his black jeans. His long, brown hair was fixed back with a red tie in a messy ponytail, fringes of it jutting out and obscuring much of his forehead.

Their server’s eyebrows scrunched over a pair of grey, keen eyes as he quickly jotted down Hunk’s drink order, words Shiro couldn’t make out through a sudden fog that muddied his brain as the man shifted his weight to lean on one hip. Before Shiro was ready those eyes met his own, widening with impatience as Shiro fumbled with the draught list. Now the focus of their server’s attention, he was helpless to stare at the purple specs reflecting the subdued patio lighting within the bands of the man’s irises.

_Stunning._

“You want anything?”

“Wh-what?”

Shiro watched his eyebrows disappear behind his messy hair.

“A drink? You want a drink?” the man replied shortly.

“Uhhm… uh…  yeah. I’ll have a, um… a h-hefebis--err, a hefeweizen...”

The man smirked, a mocking glint making the purple specs in his eyes dance. “Uh-huh, sure. Be right up.”

Shiro’s eyes followed the man as he disappeared into the bar’s side entrance, but once the door closed behind him with a loud _thwack_ , his snap back to reality was met with a deafening silence.

Hunk and Pidge were staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Dude, you _really_ need to get out more,” Hunk scolded with a shake of his head.

Pidge nodded, mock whispering to Hunk, “Can he only talk to astronomers now?”

Shiro sighed. “Come on, guys, lighten up--”

“See, look, now he’s fine,” Pidge continued, her face angled towards Hunk.

“ _Enough_. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

The two stopped and continued staring at him. Shiro sighed again, working up an apology for his tone--

“ _Aaaaanyways_ , Hunk, did you see that report about the applications of machine learning to radio data processing? Because I was thinking--” Pidge picked up where she’d left off as Shiro tuned them out once more, busying himself with the flap of drink specials.

Shiro scoffed at himself. What was happening to him? He could talk shop with the best astronomers in the world and was invited to give talks across the globe from California to Taiwan, but when a man made of long, sleek lines spoke all of a few words to him, he lost his own.

It didn’t exactly help that to make it in the cutthroat field of astronomy, he’d had to nurture a few of his more charming personality traits: mix one part stubbornness with two parts confidence, sprinkle in a little _taking charge_ and arrogance and bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 45 minutes.

But even as a kid, he didn’t make tons of friends; his early start, introversion, inquisitive nature, and innate intelligence were a foolproof recipe for social blacklisting. Though he’d avoided catching the attention of bullies, most of his peers avoided him, not wanting very close proximity to a potential nerd contagion. He’d made a few friends in college and even dated a few guys but they never kept in touch after he went off to grad school.

And then there was Adam.

They met when their graduate program recruited both of them ruthlessly, dangling carrots in front of their noses in the form of solo offices and research endowments. As two of the brightest up-and-coming astronomers of their age they formed a team of sorts, working together to unravel the mysteries of astronomy.

In the words of Carl Sagan, _If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe._

But somewhere along the way, Shiro had found that his gaze had started to linger longer on the man than it had before, his eyes cataloging the stern look on his face when coding, the bright gleam of his eyes behind those sleek, narrow frames, and the tired smile Adam had shared when they stayed up all night finishing an assignment. Those blushes he’d received in return when caught staring were just a bonus; after a lifetime of feeling alone, Adam was a balm to his very soul.

Adam had picked him up at his lowest points, the two carrying each other ever closer to the finish line, helping each other write papers and teach classes and on and on. But as they neared the end of graduate school, their thesis defense dates marked proudly in sharpie on their calendars, Shiro spent much of his time globetrotting, his effortless charisma in the research community gaining him entry to doors through which Adam couldn’t follow. He’d flaunted his research feathers, but he thought Adam understood. If given the chance, Adam would have done the same thing.

_Right?_

After Shiro’s thesis defense, Adam moved out and all but disappeared from his life.

And so… Shiro worked. He worked constantly, breaking new ground in his field, winning countless awards, carving out a name for himself on the international stage. It was once that he worked because it lit him up inside; he’d worked for the satisfaction of new discoveries, and perhaps a sense of duty to use his gifts to advance what they knew about the universe. After Adam, he’d ran on fumes of betrayal and the hope to erase the image of those bespeckled warm eyes from his stellar memory.

Now, he wasn’t really sure.

But he was past that, wasn’t he? He’d found camaraderie in Hunk and Pidge, who welcomed him with open arms. Things were fine, right? He wasn’t alone anymore.

_...Right?_

Or had he avoided being social _outside_ of his field for so long that he was literally incapable of acting like a normal person?

Shiro was suddenly reminded of the words Hunk spoke back in his office that spurred them to grab a beer at the Red Lion in the first place.

Soon to be _beers_.

“Hey, uh… guys? What is Operation… Punk?”

Hunk and Pidge stopped talking immediately and shared a look before nodding at Shiro in unison. They clasped their own hands on the table, two sharp pairs of eyes piercing him all the way through from his eyes to his organs, ripping him apart from within.

_Ut-oh._

“You’re… what, 28, 29?”

Shiro sighed. He could feel the blood pooling in his stomach already. _Here we go._ “30.”

Pidge whistled as Hunk continued, “We have come to the conclusion that you need some help.”

“Help?”

“Mmmhmm, help,” Pidge supplied.

“A push, if you will.”

“You need to break up with your career and find yourself a new man,” Pidge said with her finger raised high in the air as Hunk nodded next to her.

Shiro sighed in exasperation, shaking his head, repeating the same argument he’d told himself over and over again in his mind. Perhaps these two just hadn’t heard it yet. “Guys, there’s just no time for it right now. Maybe when--”

Hunk’s hands slapped the table, silencing him and drawing the stares of a few nearby patrons. “Yeah, you think you’ll have more time when applying for faculty jobs?”

“Or when you’re a brand new professor with tons of classes to teach?” Pidge countered.

“How about when you have a bundle of graduate students to advise?”

“When I’m a professor I’ll have more freedom to--” Shiro tried to argue, but was summarily ignored as Hunk pointed at him to curtail his protest.

“Pidge and I devised Operation Punk when we recognized the forever alone path you were heading down.” Hunk spoke, his tone a heavy and serious.

“All you do is work.”

“You barely even hang out with _us_ anymore, and we’re easy pickings!”

“The clock is ticking, Shiro!”

“It’s not even--”

“ _Enough!_ ” Shiro interrupted their tag-team accusatory attack, pinching  bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. As he felt the eyes of nearby patrons, he wanted the chair to manifest a turbo jet and fly him out of here. Or the floor could just open up and swallow him whole. Either one would work--

Pidge shook her head ominously as Hunk supplied a more detailed explanation, unphased by Shiro’s yelling. “We’re not finished. You are going to start dating. _Now._ ”

Shiro cleared his throat in an attempt to make his voice sound as authoritarian as possible. It worked… sometimes _._ “I told you, I don’t have time for this--”

“Sure you do!” Pidge exclaimed. “Here, gimme your phone,” Pidge reached across the table with grabby hands, and Shiro only pulled away _just_ in the nick of time.

Shiro’s grip on the thing turned deadly. “Uh… no?”

Hunk reached over and pried the phone from Shiro, even his best efforts no match for Hunk’s brute strength.

“Hey come on, guys…” he spoke as he sat up to reach for the phone, but it was a lost cause. Hunk tsked as he handed the phone over to Pidge, who began setting out various gadgets and tools on the table. She whistled as she plugged Shiro’s phone into something and started poking away on the touchscreen.

Shiro figured he was out of sighs for the night. Not to mention _luck._

Before long, their harried server wordlessly shuttled their beers to them, gone too quickly for Shiro to get lost in his eyes once more. The cold of the glass had barely registered in his fingertips before Shiro gulped it down in one go. Hunk eyed Shiro as Pidge went to work on his phone. He watched the server rush back and forth between nearby tables, his eyes following along in hot pursuit: the man leaned over his other patrons, his ponytail more disheveled than before, his slight frame confident as he took more orders, his really, _really_ tight black pants shifting easily with the quick, graceful movements of his body--

“Just let it happen, man,” Hunk replied in a quiet voice, reaching over to pat Shiro’s hand on the  table, looking back at Pidge’s ongoing meddling.

Shiro nearly choked. In his moment of inattention, Tight Pants had disappeared, and Shiro scoffed at himself. As if someone who looked like _that_ would give him the time of day.

As if someone who looked like _that_ wouldn’t just walk away when--

“Alrighty… and… done!” Pidge exclaimed as she slid Shiro’s phone back to him, navigating around a few condensation rings on the table’s weathered wood. “I installed a dating app.”

 _Shit_. He unlocked his phone and saw the offending software on his home screen, thinking that as soon as he returned to work he would--

“And I re-programmed your phone so you can’t delete it!”

“Niiice,” Hunk whispered to her.

“Pidge…”

“And an alarm will go off if you don’t log into it at least once a week.”

Shiro internally rejoiced but schooled his expression: he could just go in later and--

“And you can’t disable it!” Pidge finished with a high-five to Hunk.

Why did he have friends again? They were overrated. He knew he was no match for Pidge’s handiwork; it was corrupted forever. It was either get a new phone, or…

“Alright, alright… what do I have to do?” Shiro mumbled, defeated.

The pair in front of him smiled in victory, shifting restlessly in their seats. Hunk made a weird squealing noise that Shiro chose to ignore. “First you have to make your profile--I’ve supplied a few images I think could work,” Pidge instructed.

Shiro opened his gallery, gasping at all the new photos he didn’t remember taking. “Pidge! What the hell?”

Hunk smirked, his tone of voice a little too haughty for Shiro’s liking. “Operation Punk has been in the works for a while now. You remember our day trip to the beach last year for the solar eclipse viewing?”

Shiro balked, eyeing the half naked picture of him on his phone, an unassuming smile on his pixelated face as he looked off towards the water, frisbee in-hand. “I can’t use this for a dating app!”

“Why not?”

“Won’t... people get the wrong idea?” Shiro asked, the seat suddenly very uncomfortable underneath him; he fidgeted to find a better position.

Pidge smirked. “What, that you’re hot?”

Hunk bursted out laughing while Shiro looked back down at his phone. He barely made time for anything other than work these days, but one of those things was exercise. He would go crazy without hitting up the gym or going on runs before working another long day at the office.

Call it another means of escaping… _fuck_.

“That’s why I picked Bumble! It’s a little less hook-up-y. Right, Hunk?”

“Uhh, yeah, sure? I guess?”

The blind leading the blind. Natch.

Ever since earning his PhD he rarely devoted any brain space to the idea of dating anyone, let alone searching for a _life partner_ \--especially after Adam walked out of his life. Shiro figured there’d be time for that after he’d already made it as a researcher.

 _Time for them_ , he corrected.

As he looked down at his half-naked beach photo, a small part of him conceded defeat.

Academia was an infinite reel of proving himself: he felt as if he stood just within the reach of an ocean’s powerful waves, barely weathering the never-ending crash of the brine-laced cyclical high tides. He’d been taking a beating for so long that he barely noticed the shimmering sand underneath his feet, the sun shining high in the sky, nor the patterns of clouds that encompassed other aspects of his life anymore.

Matter of fact, when was the last time he’d gone home just to visit his parents?

“Just use it! The faster you meet guys, the less time you have to spend on the app!”

“ _Just_ is a four letter word, Pidge,” Shiro spoke to his phone.

Hunk scoffed. “Sheesh, for a guy who can enthrall a bunch of research big-wigs with a 20-minute talk, you sure are scared when it comes to _normal human interaction._ ”

Shiro glared at Hunk before considering his phone again.

“So… how does this work?”

Pidge jumped in. “Once your profile is up, you’ll be shown pictures of nearby guys. If you think they’re cute, you swipe right on their picture. Not so much, swipe left. The left guys disappear.”

“That’s… kind of mean.”

Hunk laughed as Pidge continued. “You’ll only be able to chat with someone if they _also_ swipe right for you. It’s actually a pretty neat algorithm if you think about it: the right-swipers go off to some e-purgatory, waiting for your response!”

“But if they swipe for me and I don’t for them, won’t they figure it out?”

“Shiro, you can’t please everyone. You’re a catch! We just have to get your profile up! Come on, what do you have to lose?” Pidge finished, the Evil Duo staring at him, their postures hunched over and ready to capture Shiro’s every move.

_They’re pretty serious, aren’t they?_

He knew he wouldn’t be leaving this bar without at least somewhat appeasing tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. As his thumb hovered over the app, his heart started to flutter. Would the people of Bumble see right through to his inner core of introversion and intellectual obsession? Would this all be some sick experiment where he confirmed that he was indeed meant to hunker in his office, working his life away ad infinitum?

As he thought about the nothing waiting for him back in his boring, soulless apartment, he guessed Pidge was right. What _did_ he have left to lose?

 _Here goes nothing,_ his brain echoed as he tapped the damn app. “Fine.”

Aside from the usual _who are you_ and _what are you looking for_ questions, Shiro paused at the next prompt. “The app wants multiple pictures. Which other ones do I use?”

In addition to his half-naked beach photo, Pidge reminded him of all the other candids and professional career-type photos she’d uploaded to his phone to fill the remaining spaces in his profile. Satisfied Pidge would get off his back (and happy he was mostly clothed in the remaining selection), he realized he just had one more fill-in-the-blank left until he was done.

“Bio? Uhh… can I attach my CV?”

Pidge and Hunk looked at each other in disbelief before bursting out in laughter while Shiro sat, dumbfounded, waiting for his so-called friends to get their shit together.

“N-no, you… idiot! Your bio is a quick... l-little ‘about you’ for potential matches!” Pidge managed, her voice warped by giggles.

Shiro looked back down at the stupid app. “I don’t… I don’t really know what to say. I guess I could include--”

“Two truths and a lie,” a new voice spoke up from his left.

Shiro practically jumped out of his chair at the voice, turning to meet the eyes of their server.

“Wh-what?”

Those iridescent purple hued eyes--Shiro felt dissected as they were wielded unerringly on his own. “Two truths and a lie. List two things that are true about you, and one that’s false. Have your matches guess.”

“Oh hey, that’s a great idea!” Pidge practically shouted, her empty pint glass evidence of her unusual volume.

Shiro felt his hand shaking with the force of his death grip as he found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the man.

Words jumped out of his mouth when Pidge cleared her throat across the table, “Oh, um… th-thanks? Uhh…?”

“Keith.”

“Keith,” he parroted back, almost to himself, feeling his lips turn up.

Keith smiled back for a moment before taking in their empty glasses. “You guys need another round?”

Hunk and Pidge practically screamed their yesses.


	2. Bumble Fumble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh please. He sounds cute! Swipe right, swipe right!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so honored by the feedback, thank you all! <3

“Pidge, you didn’t say I had to respond to matches so quickly!” Shiro whined, dragging himself into Pidge’s office with heavy footsteps. He sat down, his attention briefly distracted by a few new multi-colored flashing lights around her so-called _command center._

Pidge replied with her eyes still glued to her monitors, “Well, duh, you can’t wait forever to talk to the guys! Hey, wait does that mean you’re using the app?”

“Uhm, well, the alarm--”

Pidge sighed. “Right. So you matched? Anyone _super hot?_ ” Pidge finally turned to him, baring her teeth in a smile that to Shiro looked a little too predatory.

“Uh, well…”

“Out with it!”

Shiro’s hand went subconsciously to rub the back of his neck. “Well, uh… there was this one guy with tattoos, but--wait, no wait! _Wait!_ Don’t distract me! It says I have to send a message within 24 hours or the match disappears. I don’t know what to say! You said this would be easy!”

“Just say _hey_ , you ninny,” Pidge scoffed, turning back around to furiously type, lines of green text scrolling down her monitor at a breakneck speed.

“What the heck is a--wait, I can just say hey? Don’t I have to be… clever, or something?”

“I don’t know, they’re just people. How bad could it be? And you can unmatch them if you do something stupid and embarrassing which is…well, it’s likely, Shiro,” Pidge finished with a serious nod.

“This is harder to wade through than my last referee report,” Shiro mumbled. He knew he was being overly dramatic, but it was already bad enough that he had to just… _toss_ away people that he wasn’t interested in with the flick of a finger.

Now there was a ticking clock? For fuck’s sake.

Dating made him _curse._

“Come on, let me see what kind of guys turn up! Lemme see!”

Shiro sighed and leaned over her chair to show her the app; he knew better than to let her have his phone again. It loaded, showing him a nearby guy that was, well. Not really his type.

“Ew, swipe left.”

“Pidge!” he admonished.

The app produced his next person for judgement; a blonde, 28-year old man named Jacob, who was every bit as half-naked as Shiro’s curated photo collection, holding a football and showing off a set of washboard abs.

“Ohhh, he’s cute! And look--you have something in common!”

Shiro scoffed. “Yeah? And what’s that? A penchant for involuntary, shirtless candids?”

“Involuntary? No, it says he’s a scientist, too! Oooh, a microbiologist! You guys can talk about aliens together!” Pidge pointed at his reported occupation. “Here, click on the rest of the bio. You _do_ read the bios, right?”

Shiro nodded. Apparently, Jacob loved sports and that _dog haters need not apply_.

“He sounds like a tool.”

“Oh please. He sounds cute! Swipe right, swipe right!”

“I thought you said I was allowed to be picky, Pidge.”

Pidge snorted, her mumble barely audible, “Not too picky for the waiter at the Red Lion last week…”

Shiro’s head whipped towards Pidge. “ _What_ did you say?”

Their server-- _Keith_ \--may have popped up in his private thoughts once or twice the last few days, but he’d already burned that bridge. He would have left a better impression on Keith if he’d instead spilled beer all over himself rather than opened his mouth. That smirk Keith directed his way had been deadly, the judgement written clear as day all over his face. And besides, they were practically from different worlds--a server at a bar and a scientist on his way to international acclaim? What did they have in common?

Well… Shiro _did_ like beer…

“Oh… nothing. Get on with it, old man!”

Shiro swiped right, but instead of showing him a picture of his next victim, the screen darkened and a little animation informed him that he and Jacob had matched.

The color drained from his face when, not ten seconds later, he had a ping for a new message.

“Oh my god, the thirst is REAL!” Pidge clapped, dancing in her chair, but Shiro was filled with dread. As soon as he clicked on his messages, Pidge would see that this was his first and only dating app message--ever.

_And what the hell does_ thirst _mean?_

“Well, go on! Maybe he sent a dick pic--”

“ _Jesus_ , Pidge!” Shiro chastised, cutting her off from backseat dating by standing up, grateful for his towering height. He felt sweat form on his forehead as he considered the little chat box in the right corner that, if tapped, would make this all so indelibly real. Was he going to do this?

What he going to… _date?_

His mind supplied a flash of grey eyes before he took the plunge.

\----

Contrary to popular belief, Shiro _did_ open Jacob’s message, but it was just an innocent invite to grab a drink or two one day after work. He thought Jacob was operating a little quickly, but Shiro didn’t know if he was supposed to chat with people for a while first before proceeding to a meet-up, or if mutual interest to an in-person meet-up was implied with a rightward swipe, and if that was _indeed_ the case, then--

_Brain, zip-it._

After pacing a trail into his dingy office carpet one day during lunch, Shiro had decided he could do this however he wanted: Jacob would be a great warm-up for what would hopefully be a successful dating career. If he screwed up, they could part ways, intra-date embarrassment aside.

“ _Well, it’s likely, Shiro,_ ” he’d internally mocked Pidge’s words, his memory perhaps over-impersonating her higher-pitched voice.

Jacob had suggested the Red Lion, and it wasn’t like he could argue. Shiro wasn’t too familiar with other bars in the area, and taking the plunge might be a little easier at his former stomping grounds. His easy acceptance to go along with Jacob had absolutely _nothing_ to do with the lithe server he might see there in passing. No way. Obviously.

Now he stood outside the bar, periodically glancing down at his phone as he shifted his weight back-and-forth, waiting for Jacob. At this rate, Mister Washboard Abs was already going to be late.

Shiro was staring absently at his shoes some minutes later when his date finally arrived. “Uhm, Shiro?”

Standing in front of him, Shiro decided Jacob’s Bumble pictures represented him well: the man had short-cropped blonde hair styled around a pair of blue eyes that matched his pressed button down shirt. Shiro hated the part of himself that appreciated how its seams were stretched to its limits, the man’s buff figure nothing to shake a stick at. Jacob offered him a warm smile that crinkled his eyes.

Maybe this dating thing wasn’t so bad after all.

“Hey, Jacob. Nice to meet you,” Shiro smiled back, eyeing Jacob’s burgeoning shoulder muscle as they shook hands.

_Is this… thirst?_

“Shall we?” Jacob asked as he opened the door for Shiro.

“I… yeah, sounds good.”

The two were seated inside by a window facing the street. Shiro didn’t know how this was supposed to go down, but he figured what Jacob had put in his profile was fair game. “So, um… what do you do for a living? Your profile said you were a microbiologist?”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah! I got my Bachelor’s a few years back and have been helping out in the lab here on campus since… August? I think?”

Shiro nodded, readying himself for a follow-up question--

“So, like, you’re an astrologer, right? Do you think aliens are real?”

Shiro hoped he remembered to countercurse Pidge if he made it out of there alive. “Well, not quite. I study _astronomy_ , which--”

“Yeah, like Virgo and Taurus and shit like that! Cool, man! The other day I was reading some article on the internet that talked about Leos and how--”

Shiro bristled at the mockery of his profession, deciding that tuning Jacob out in the first few minutes of his date did not constitute a Good Start (TM), but as Jacob continued his poetic waxing about what his future meant as a Leo, Shiro soon found the air around him to be thick and noxious to breathe.

He stood, the loud screeching of his chair across the floor an effective conversation staller as any. “Sorry, I, um--I’m not feeling so good. I’ll be right back,” Shiro spoke, already half turned towards the bathroom.

His feet quickly ate up the distance past the bar and he pushed his way through the men’s door, hunching over the sink with a sigh. He turned on the faucet to splash some water on his face and sanity into his brain. He knew dating would be difficult, and he knew he had to give Jacob a chance--but it felt like someone was strapping him into a rollercoaster ride he knew would have jumps and spins and flips he wasn’t used to. He was squeezing his eyes shut as the twists and turns enveloped him, the loops wreaking havoc on his stomach.

Pidge had only just downloaded Bumble to his phone, and there he was, mid-corkscrew, barely tolerating his first date.

Shiro collected himself, solidifying his resolve to go back out there with a nice, deep breath. Even if they jumped for an in-person meet before a little much needed back-and-forth on the app, he’d weather this date and try again later. Shiro conceded that at least he couldn’t complain about the scenery.

He could focus on that instead of the words coming out of Jacob’s mouth.

Pidge would be so proud.

He stood for a few more seconds before wiping his face off, working up the courage to leave the safety of the bathroom. He made a passing glance at himself in the mirror and nodded before heading back to Jacob, but as he walked past the bar towards their table at the front, a familiar sarcasm-laced voice stopped him in his tracks. “Going _that_ well, huh?”

Shiro stopped breathing as he turned towards the voice, the figure of Keith standing behind the bar drying off some glassware putting him in stitches. The bar’s warm spotlights seemed to reflect off of Keith from all directions, playing tricks with the color of his grey eyes, exaggerating the hypnotizing purple that swallowed Shiro whole not two weeks ago. Or maybe he was seeing things, what with the lack of oxygen getting to his brain. “Uhm... “

Keith grinned and shook his head. “I’ll come rescue you in a minute.”

_Am I that obvious?_

Despite the cue that he should head back, Shiro’s eyes couldn’t help but scan the man’s shoulders, tracing down his arms to his hands. Keith’s fingers were long and lean like the rest of him, but as Shiro watched they suddenly stopped--wet pint glass suspended in his hands as if time itself stood still. His chest tightened and sweat formed on his brow as he realized what he’d done, scuttling his eyes back up to Keith’s, but it was too late.

But Keith was staring right back at him with wide eyes, eyebrows up near his hairline.

He considered an apology as he quickly looked away, but that would’ve been a lie. “Um, r-right. Thanks. Keith,” Shiro hastily added to the floor before bolting back to his table.

Jacob was still in good spirits, making sure Shiro was okay before barraging him with more questions about his star sign. Shiro managed to steer the topic elsewhere, and before long Jacob was rambling about his dogs for a bit before his knight in shining armor swooped in, wielding a pen and a pad, even after Shiro acted like a total creep at the bar.

“Have you had a chance to, um, look at the drink menu?” Keith asked them in a stilted, high pitch, and Shiro found himself missing the usual purr of his voice.

Jacob went first, ordering some kind of drink that Shiro didn’t recognize.

Keith turned to Shiro. “Same as… last time?”

He could barely meet Keith’s eyes, as much as he wanted to. Did he leave that poor an impression on him that he’d remember his drink order from weeks ago? Did Keith laugh with his friends about the stupid guy he’d waited on that could barely form a sentence? Would he tell them now how he stared him down like a freak? His face warmed.

“Okay,” he replied, his voice quiet as Keith bolted, unsure if the man had even heard his reply.

Jacob smiled. “I guess you come here a lot, since the staff remember what you order!”

“Not… not really,” Shiro spoke with a self-directed laugh, his palm rubbing the hair on the back of his head, something he was doing more and more lately. “So, tell me more about your job?”

\----

The rest of the date was fine, boring even, Shiro giving Jacob plenty of opportunities to talk about himself as he seemed want to do. He was a nice guy, he supposed, but even in this short of time, Shiro knew it wouldn’t go anywhere. Despite literally asking, the man was uninterested in Shiro’s perspective on… astrology, and when the date concluded and Jacob got up to leave, he realized Jacob never asked about what he put in _his_ profile.

He was also decidedly not a dog person.

Shiro got up as well, ready to unstrap himself from this ride, but movement in his periphery caught his attention.

Keith waved him over from behind the bar.

_Did my card not go through or something?_

Shiro found his feet moving of their own volition, electric nerves shooting through him as he headed towards an empty stool near Keith. He’d barely sat to ask what was up before finding a tall beer placed in front of him on a neat little square napkin that would collect the condensation forming up and down the curvy glass.

“Figured you could use another one after that. On me.”

Shiro’s thoughts whirled around in his brain, like a computer program trying to come up with the right answer. Why would Keith--”You really don’t have to.”

Keith just shook his head, face set in a stoic mask, grabbing a nearby glass to dry off as Shiro nodded in thanks. He hadn’t noticed until now, but the bar was basically empty. Only a few patrons lingered here and there at the pool tables or loitered around the patio entrance, most waiting for the Sun’s fierce heat to abate before braving the outdoors to grab a drink. Shiro tried not to stare at Keith again as he sipped his beer, turning his head away to look back outside at the gently darkening sky, the Earth’s rotation ready to usher in another humid summer evening.

“Thanks for, um, rescuing me,” he spoke to the glass window and the world beyond.

At the silence he received in reply he turned back towards Keith. There it was, that smirk. “Looked like you needed it. Was that your first ever date or something?”

“No, I’ve… well…” Shiro sighed. “Maybe. Yes,” he concluded quietly. “In a long while, anyway.”

Keith turned away to grab another glass, his soft fringes of hair hiding much of his face but did nothing to mute his snicker. “What on Earth did you put in your profile to attract a person who seriously drinks appletinis?”

If Keith’s mocking words and laughs at him were daggers, consider Shiro a card-carrying masochist.

Shiro smiled, tearing apart the beer napkin, setting pieces of it in a neat little pile as his foot fidgeted against the stool’s limb. _Old habits really do die hard._  “I guess I just got started. Didn’t really know him at all before agreeing to… this,” Shiro finished, gesturing around the bar with his hands as he spoke.

Keith nodded. “Ahh. That eager?”

A soundless chuckle escaped him at the thought of himself being eager to date. Maybe in an alternate universe. “No, but my friends are. For me, I mean.”

“The pair you were with last time?”

Shiro nodded.

“They seemed… fun.”

Shiro smiled to himself. “They’re a pair of traitors.”

Keith barked out a laugh, setting down an empty glass and meeting Shiro’s eyes again. “Friends often are.”

They considered each other in silence before Shiro realized he never answered Keith’s original question. “Oh, I um… took your suggestion. For my profile.”

“Oh yeah?”

_Is he still really… talking to me?_  “Two truths and a lie, right?”

Keith nodded, leaning one hip against the bar as Shiro suddenly felt bloated with self-doubt. _This is so stupid…_

“So the lie I put was--”

“No!” Keith interrupted as he stopped his work and placed the glass on the table. “I want to guess.“

Shiro blinked a few times to restart his system. “Um, o-okay,” he started with a self-conscious huff. “I put, uh… that I’ve been to all the continents, I scaled Mount Everest, and I… have a PhD.”

Keith’s eyes narrowed before he leaned forward on the bar, resting his weight on his elbows, his face scrunched up in concentration. None of those gems seemed to surprise him; his eyes just roamed around Shiro’s face and shoulders, dissecting him, and the longer it went on, the more sensitive Shiro’s nerves became, as if even the slightest word or breath from Keith could electrocute him. He sensed everything around him anew under Keith’s scrutiny: the mushy-but-uncomfortable barstool underneath him, the way the bar lights cast shadows on Keith’s face, the damp, sticky bartop under his hands. Despite an impending shock and Keith toeing the line of his personal space, Shiro didn’t feel an impulse to lean away.

Maybe just the opposite. His skin, his face, his insides were too warm but he stopped himself from looking around for a vent. _Do they not have air conditioning anymore?_

“Well, you’re certainly dorky enough for a PhD, so that’s true.”

Shiro blushed, his hands fidgeting around his pint.

“And people who do Everest aren’t just one-time climbers… here, gimme your hands?”

Before Shiro could react, Keith had pulled Shiro’s arm gently across the bartop, those nimble fingers turning his wrist over and tracing his barely-there callouses. Each gentle pass of his fingertips sent warm shockwaves of electricity up through his palm, careening through his arms to amplify the beating of his heart. Keith was so close he could see the array of colors in his hair and feel the puffs of his exhalations on his palms.

Keith released his hand too soon and straightened up, hopefully none the wiser of the flush that Shiro figured would burn him alive. The flames persisted as Keith let his own hand drop to the table with a _thwack_ , giving a little nod as he spoke. “Everest is the lie.”

“Well… you got me.” Shiro croaked out with a shrug, tracing the places Keith had touched him with his other hand, wondering just what in the hell _that_ was all about.

“You know, you could have put something a little more fun, like… _I hate bananas._ ”

“But I don't hate bananas.”

Keith narrowed his eyes at him.

“O-oh,” Shiro mumbled to his lap, Keith’s electric touches clearly muddying his higher order thinking. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

“Alright, smart guy, your turn. _Cats are better than dogs._ Truth or lie?”

Shiro wasn't sure what Keith was expecting; they barely knew each other, and he still could not comprehend why Keith was giving him the time of day. The offer of a Post Bad Date beer could have been little more than a pitying gesture, but to remain afterwards and play this game?

Two truths and a lie?

He'd climb Everest right now if it would tell him what Keith was thinking.

Baffled as he was, Shiro could make an educated guess. He built an entire _career_ around educated guesses. To the question at hand, though Keith's efficient, graceful movements reminded him of the former, an inexplicable gut feeling told him that Keith was a dog person. His traitorous brain supplied images of Keith cuddling a little tabby kitten anyway--

_What is_ wrong _with me?_

“Lie.”

Keith smiled. “Right on the money. Now it's your turn.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“That's not--” Keith started, letting his trademark smirk re-appear. “Yeah. A wolfhound. A big, slobbery wolfhound.”

Shiro chuckled, his nerves calming but his face heating up all the more. “What's their name?”

“His name is Cosmo.”

Shiro wondered if Keith had a thing for space. _Too good to be true._ “I'm more a cat person myself, but… I don't really have the time,” he spoke, taking a swig of his beer.

_No time for cats, or fun, or boyfriends--_

Keith laughed and rolled his eyes, putting on a dramatic sigh, “Ah, I guess we weren't meant to be, afterall.”

Of all the things Keith could have said while Shiro had a throatful of hefeweizen, Keith’s teasing comment was perhaps the worst. His body responded by sucking in air because he was _dead_ , inadvertently channeling some of the beer towards his lungs. He put a fist over his mouth and heaved a few heavy coughs, patting at his chest.

“You okay, man?” Keith asked after a few seconds, the purple specs in his eyes dancing.

Shiro only nodded, no words forthcoming but his mind running a thousand miles a minute. Why would Keith say something like that?

And why was Shiro so disappointed knowing it was just a joke?

Beer re-routed and coughs subsided, Shiro sat with his thoughts until Keith continued their conversation, his hands drying another glass. “So… um, I thought you were supposed to get your life back after finishing a PhD?”

_If only_. Shiro sent mental blessings for the change in subject. “Nah, it only gets worse. Heh, I've pulled more all-nighters as a post-doc than I ever did in grad school.”

Keith made no reply but continued drying the same glass over and over again, watching his own hands and leaving behind a prolonged silence. His robotic motions reminded Shiro of himself, the same way he would fidget and stare off into space as he attempted to conjure up the right words or phrases for his manuscripts. Eventually Keith cleared his throat a few times before speaking again, and Shiro thought it was unusual that he wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Um, well, if you find the time ever, I was wondering--”

The kitchen door slammed open behind Keith, making both Shiro and Keith jump in alarm and turn to assess the noise. A very tall woman popped her head out from the doors, her eyes locking on Keith.

“We need you back here, K, pronto.”

“Alright, Krolia,” he spoke quietly as he turned back around, shaking his head. “Well, um, you heard the ma’am.”

Shiro stood from the stool. “What were you--”

“Good luck with--”

They both stopped short after talking over each other, Shiro looking away in embarrassment, his fingers tapping away at the bartop.

_When will I stop messing up around this guy--_

“Heh, well, I guess we're both out of practice, huh?” Keith spoke into the relative quiet, and though Shiro wasn’t looking, _couldn’t_ look, their conversation had been going so well, _damnit_ , he didn’t detect the usual sass laced in the man’s voice.

When the courage came to him, he took in the even upturn of Keith’s lips, the grin reaching all the way up the sleek shape of his cheekbones to his eyes. He could only stare at how such a simple gesture, that gentle smile, could transform his entire face, and as an observer by profession, he cataloged every facet, every line: from the warmth of his azure eyes to the barely-there dimples on each cheek, topped with a rose-colored flush that was forming before Shiro’s very eyes--

“G-goodnight, Dr. Shirogane,” Keith got out before nearly fumbling his last dried glass and high-tailing it through the kitchen doors.


	3. Backlash

The next few weeks were a blur to Shiro, what with finally submitting his manuscript and devoting time to all the projects he’d neglected in the process. He found himself taking more breaks to look out his office window, his thousand-yard stare seeing nothing but the memory of purple irises, black skinny jeans, and rosied dimples. Though they didn’t get to finish their little _two truths and a lie_ game to Shiro’s satisfaction, he couldn’t help but wonder what were the rest of Keith’s interrupted words.

Probably just asking more about his life as an over-worked, over-stressed postdoctoral associate. People were always asking questions about his life as an astronomer, why would Keith be any different?

_G-goodnight, Dr. Shirogane._

_Fuck._

In any case, he got lost in his dizzying array of projects, working long hours and vowing to sleep when he was dead. Though he thought about returning several times, the urge to pop in at the Red Lion was dampened by two things: for one, he was too damn busy.

And two, what would Keith think if he just showed up by himself?

The word _desperate_ echoed in his brain in a voice eerily similar to Keith’s snarky timbre.

Invisible assailants aside, he couldn’t even catch a break with his real friends: to Pidge’s eternal judgement, he became increasingly less consistent with logging into Bumble, his motivation dampened by his first date with Jacob. As far as Shiro was concerned, Pidge had about a year’s worth of karma to wade through before she was permitted to criticize him, but she did it anyway.

_This is Pidge we’re talking about, here._

Not to mention it was pretty easy for Shiro to justify ignoring his dating life considering some of the interactions he’d had with his recent matches.

“It’s like they’re trying to scare me away. Are men this weird to women, too?” Shiro contemplated late one night as he walked to the train stop with Hunk.

“You are so totally asking the wrong person, dude, but I can ask around. You know. To my _friends_ ,” Hunk replied with an elbow to Shiro’s side.

“Yeah, _yeah_. One guy wanted to know where I live! After a handful of messages!”

“Like, our borough, or--”

“No, my address, Hunk. To see how _close_ we are to each other,” Shiro mumbled as his fingers made air quotes. “And another guy just started complaining about his job as soon as we matched. To say nothing of my date with that… guy. Is there anybody on this thing who’s just… normal?”

Hunk gave him a long look, as if to say _and you are_?

Shiro rolled his eyes and looked out towards the city skyline as they waited for the train.

Hunk suddenly leaned into Shiro. “Uhhh… did you get any, um…” he spoke quietly, then whispered something else that Shiro couldn’t make out.

“What? I can’t hear--”

“You know...” Hunk repeated, and whispered once again, still too quietly for Shiro.

“What?”

“DICK PICS!” Hunk yelled.

“ _Jesus_ , Hunk! What is it with you two!” Shiro whisper-shouted as he ducked, as if making himself shorter would hide him from passersby who happened upon Hunk’s helpful increase in volume.

Shiro’s eyes scanned their environment for any other weary travellers they’d subjected to their little chat, but thanks to their odd schedules, the train stop was blessedly empty. He sighed after convincing himself Hunk’s shout had went unheard and stood back up to his full height, brushing off invisible dick-shaped parasites from his shirt. “I know you guys mean well, but I’m not sure this is such a good idea anymore. Do you think you could convince Pidge to--”

“Nope, and I’m gonna pretend you didn’t even ask.”

“Come on, I’ll go out more. We had fun last time!”

“Yeah, and that was a _month_ ago, Shiro. We tried dragging you out again after you submitted your paper but _noooo_. It sounds to me like an app that will annoy you into _having fun_ and meeting a guy is just what you need.”

“But I went out again! I went on the date--”

“ _One_ date, Shiro. In a month. Puh-lease.”

Shiro wondered how often normal people went on dates. Was he really that bad at this? “Well, how about now? We could grab a drink!” Shiro attempted, his words a little fast, his hands spread in supplication.

Desperation.

_What--what am I saying?_

“Shiro, it’s like, Tuesday.”

“So? You’re the one who wants me to--”

“Christ, _fine_ , let’s go. But you’re paying for a cab back. And… appetizers.”

They pushed back through the turnstiles to return to campus, Shiro’s feet tracing the fastest steps to the Red Lion on autopilot.

Hunk stopped him with a hand at his elbow. “Hey, where we going? We could hit up that new tequila bar on First?”

Shiro’s stomach plummeted to his feet. He wasn’t ready to admit it to himself, but he really wanted to--

“Why not the, um… Red Lion?”

“But we went there last time, Shiro. Now I _know_ going out is a big step for you and all, but you have to try _different_ places--”

Shiro sighed at Hunk’s condescending tone, making a show of looking around at the velvety darkness that had descended over their city, save the twinkling skyline not too far off in the distance. “It’s also the closest.”

Hunk considered this, toying with his bottom lip in thought. “Okay, alright. Baby steps. I'll let Pidge know,” he finished as he whipped out his phone.

They began walking again, but it wasn’t long before Hunk broke their comfortable silence once more.

“Well, um… _did_ you?”

“Damnit, Hunk!”

\----

As Shiro and Hunk rounded the last block on their walk to the Red Lion, Shiro tried to understand why he suddenly felt as if he was bursting with energy, his fists clenching and releasing, his heart racing in his chest. It was odd; he’d never looked more forward to going to a bar before.

 _Ever_.

Shiro chalked up his eager attitude to work stress. It was natural, afterall, to want to unwind after a long stretch of work without a break. He was just excited to let it all go.

 _Yep_. That was it.

They stepped inside and after a few minutes, a petite blonde hostess grabbed some menus and ushered them away to a vacant table. The floorboards of the indoor bar area creaked underneath his feet as he and Hunk followed along past the bar to the patio door. The bar was manned by several bored-looking staff, chatting with each other and checking their phones, none of whom he recognized. The aroma of fried food wafted through the kitchen doors, and giddy that they’d gone to his choice of venue, Shiro decided actual appetizers were an excellent idea.

They pushed through the back door, warm air a shock after being in air conditioning even after only a few minutes. Another balmy night, another blast from the 90’s past playing on the outdoor speakers.

Another… server.

Shiro battened down his disappointment when a tall woman with a bright purple pixie cut came by to take their drink orders. He looked around the patio space after the woman left, craning his neck, leaving no corner unturned. Okay, he could admit-- _at least to myself_ \--that he was looking for someone in particular. He wasn’t _that_ stupid.

“What are you looking for, man?”

Shiro sat back in his seat, scoffing to himself. “Um, no one. Sorry. Anyways, what did you work on today?”

“No one?”

“Nothing, I mean… I meant nothing.”

Hunk’s eyes narrowed to little judgy slits. “What’s going on, dude?” Hunk stopped as if contemplating his own question, and soon his eyes lit up in discovery. “Why did you really want to come here?”

Shiro sighed. “Will you please just… drop it,” he pleaded, his starting to fidget underneath the table.

“Um, _no_. Have we met? Out with it, Shiro.”

Shiro let Hunk draw his own conclusions as he toyed with a damp, leftover coaster. Despite refusing to meet Hunk's eyes, he felt them boring holes into his head, as if that would allow all of his secrets to escape the chasm of his mind and spring forth.

It must have worked.

Hunk gasped. “No _way._ Did you meet a guy? Wh-what, is he _here?_ ” Hunk finished at a whisper as he sat up to look around.

Shiro sighed, cursing Hunk’s powers of perception. “...No.”

“No you didn’t meet a guy, or no he’s not here?”

“Hunk--”

“Shirooooo, deets! Pidge is gonna _freak_ ,” he finished in a quiet voice to himself as he dug his phone out of his pants.

“Look, it’s… I already screwed it up, okay?”

“I’m _sure_ that’s not true. What happened?”

Shiro felt his face pinch together up as he fought to find the right words. When it came to Keith, he _never_ seemed to have the right words. “So I went on that date, right?”

Hunk leaned forward and nodded.

“So, we came here. I didn’t talk much about it to you guys, but it was a trainwreck. The guy asked about his star signs--”

Hunk cringed, “No _way_.”

“--and I just got overwhelmed. Well, the, um. The guy. The _other_ guy. Was here, and he, um… he noticed and after the date we talked for a bit.”

“Well? What did you guys--”

A mess of approaching footsteps halted Hunk’s interrogation, as Pidge showed up with a trio of people Shiro didn’t recognize. Oblivious to their topic of conversation, Pidge made her introductions, “Hey guys! I hope you don’t mind I brought some buddies over from physics. I’d like you to meet Veronica, Allura, and Lotor. Guys, this is Hunk and Shiro.”

Shiro only had a moment to take in their visitors when said _Lotor_ had leaned forward, practically coming nose-to-nose with Shiro, his white hair creating a sinister veil around his face.

“Hey, you,” the man spoke with a British accent, his voice smooth and deep. He could feel the minty puffs of his breath on his face as he spoke. Shiro shivered. “I know you! I swiped right a few days ago! What gives?”

Remnants of embarrassment lingered in his voice from Hunk’s interrogation, “Oh! Uhhhh… um… I don't… I don't remember--”

The man barked out a hearty chuckle, reaching over to jostle Shiro’s shoulder. “I'm just teasing you, Shiro! Pidge has told us all about your new dating endeavors! What fun!” the man finished, sitting down next to him, a little too close, flipping his long, white hair gingerly over his shoulder.

Shiro felt his fists clench.

“Oh how wonderful! I hear dating is so difficult nowadays,” the woman Pidge introduced as Allura observed as she pulled up a chair from another table; it seemed a lot of Pidge’s physics collaborators were from across the pond. Shiro's eyes caught on the unusual birthmarks on her smooth, brown skin, and her similarly toned shock of white hair.

His eyes also caught on Hunk and Pidge sharing a few whispers.

“Yeah, it's been really trying,” Shiro mumbled with a pointed look towards Pidge.

Pidge had the grace to look embarrassed, her cheeks flushed pink. A little. “I made some modifications to his phone so he has to use his dating app… or _else_ ,” she finished with a toothy smile.

Allura giggled. “Does a little gremlin pop up when he doesn’t use it?”

Pidge’s eyes grew wide. “No, but that’s a great idea!”

Shiro was about to express his disapproval when he felt his table neighbor bust through Shiro’s touch barrier.

“Oohhhh, resistant to the scene, are we?” Lotor said a little too close to Shiro's ear as he laid a heavy arm across his shoulders. “Don't worry, little Shiro, it just takes time. Of course, you'll have to compete with me for all the good ones!” he laughed, deep and haughty.

If only Shiro had some kind of particle shield to deflect unwanted parasites.

Not to mention lines of questioning.

Despite his annoyance, Shiro thought Lotor’s smooth voice sounded pretty… well. _Hot_. The man had high, shapely cheekbones, an arrogant Roman nose, and a strong jaw, to say nothing of his commanding height and obviously sculpted physique.

Shiro _definitely_ would've swiped right.

Even so, he felt pinned under Lotor’s arm, its weight holding him prisoner in plain sight of his two closest friends in the world, whereas Keith’s touches had warmed his skin and set fire to his insides as he’d inspected Shiro’s callouses to correctly guess his _two truths and a lie._

He may have been trapped under Keith’s stare but his heart had fluttered as if he’d been running free.

With no hope for rescue in sight as Pidge and Hunk conversed with Veronica and Allura, a conversation Shiro couldn’t really hear over the white noise in his brain, Shiro figured there were only so many hours in a night and before long he could go home and forget this ever happened. Beers came and went, time marked by random shouted laughs, Shiro’s intermittent hope-springs-eternal neck-cricks, and pit-stops to the bathroom. Though Lotor eventually released him, the man found ways to touch or pat him as he butt his way into other ongoing conversations, earning a scornful look from Veronica no less than three times. Shiro didn’t think there was enough naturally-recurring alcohol in the entire universe to help him withstand _Lotor._

And believe him, there was _a lot._

Forever later, the table quieted down and when their server brought _another_ round Shiro and pondered the light caramel color of his fresh-- _fifth_ \--beer, wondering if its off-color opacity was as hazy as his future dating prospects.

And, well, his current mental state.

“So, what do you all do in physics? I don't recognize any of you,” Shiro blurted, hoping to create some space between him and Mister Touchy Feely. His eyes were on Veronica when he asked, but unfortunately for Shiro, it wasn't she who answered.

Lotor leaned in again, clumsily brushing Shiro's arm with his own, having kept up with Shiro beer-for-beer. “Allura and I are new post-docs in physics, working on harnessing energy from rare Earth materials. Veronica here--”

“Can speak for _herself,_ thank you,” Veronica interrupted, sending a cutting glare over her eyeglasses to Lotor. “I keep the department’s systems running, just like Pidge does for astronomy.”

Shiro liked her already.

Shiro nodded, his speech a little slurred, “Oh, that's great. So much of astronomy requires use of supercomputers, so I don't… really know what we'd do without Pidge. Without you, Pidge,” he finished as he looked at her. _Most of the time,_ Shiro added to himself.

When Hunk laughed and Pidge pouted, he realized his last thought had escaped his mouth.

Veronica smiled, turning to Pidge. “Speaking of, did you guys get that new server installed?”

Pidge nodded enthusiastically as Shiro suddenly felt an elbow in his side.

He turned, finding Lotor in his face once more. He could see Lotor’s hand rise in his periphery, but as drunk as he was in public like this, he was helpless to stop it without creating a scene.

Lotor’s hand found Shiro’s hair, mussing up the white tuft that crowned the top of his hairline. “This is quite an interesting style. It’s fascinating to me that someone as cute--” Lotor hiccuped, “--as you is still single!”

Shiro leaned back from Lotor’s continued advancement but was saved by a loud bang, the sound of a slamming door. Lotor was shocked straight as he and Shiro looked towards the noise, but the door out to the patio was already shut, evidence of its user gone.

As Shiro’s eyes skipped erratically back from the patio door to his impending doom, they caught midway on a black-clad figure rushing towards a vacant table at the edge of the patio, familiar messy brown hair done up with a red tie.

Another loud clang reverberated through the air as Keith-- _Keith_ \--dropped the crate he was carrying on its surface with little care for its fragility. He faced away from their group but turned his head, just enough for his eyes to pierce through Shiro’s.

Though Keith had not been one to hold back a snarky comment in Shiro’s experience, Shiro had never seen his eyes so scathing that the skin between his brows was scrunched up, contorted and angry.

_Is he… is he okay?_

Another _fucking_ elbow at his side.

“Ahaha, you see him too, hmm?” Lotor whispered, slinging his arm around Shiro again in some misguided attempt at camaraderie. “See, there’s so much to look forward to when it comes to dating. Nothing to fear!”

Shiro watched as Keith yanked out a chair with a deafening screech and sat, leaning forward to rest his arms on the table, clenching his hair in his fists before reaching in his pocket to pull out a cigarette.

It wasn’t long before a tall woman--the same one that pulled Keith away from their last conversation--came out to the patio and spoke to Keith too quietly for Shiro to properly eavesdrop. Keith spoke to the woman-- _Krolia_?--with wild gestures, the embers of his cigarette lighting up as he  whipped his hands through the air, his face morphing into a bevy of expressions before getting up in a flurry to re-enter the bar.

“Fiesty one, eh?” Lotor smirked. “I wonder what he’d be like--”

Shiro choked on nothing and pushed Lotor away, hoping to derail whatever was about to come out his cesspool of imaginings, but Lotor just laughed.

Loosened impulses and an overwhelming desire to get the _fuck_ away from Lotor had Shiro making to get up and follow after Keith--he looked so _upset_ \--but he was stopped by a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Now, now, little Shiro, just because you like what you see doesn’t mean the time is right, hmm?” Lotor whispered in his ear, but it was just long enough for Shiro to come to what little of his common sense survived its war with beer.

Why would Keith want Shiro’s help, someone he barely knew? If something was really upsetting him, he probably wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with a relative stranger. If that woman couldn’t help, what could Shiro possibly do? By some miracle, maybe Lotor was right: maybe he shouldn’t run after Keith.

Though coming to the Red Lion was his idea in the first place, Shiro only just endured the company as he internally chomped at the bit to seek out Keith. Their party devolved into nothing more than a drunken Tuesday night spectacle on the mostly empty patio, echoes of clinking beer glasses and laughs seeming to propagate ad infinitum. His mind wandered off to his conversation with Keith, his worry consuming any hope he had of paying attention to anything else. He declined another round and requested his tab to the collective admonishment of his friends.

“You sure you're ready to leave, tiger? You two look pretty cozy,” their pixie-haired server said shortly, her one eyebrow cocked like a weapon. Maybe it was the beer, but Shiro thought she seemed a little angry, too.

“Um, yes? Please?”

_What is going on?_

Check handled wordlessly by their server, he said his goodbyes and shook his head after Lotor blew him a kiss.

_Holy hell._

Light on his feet, he entered the bar and started wandering, unable to recall why finding Keith wasn’t a good idea in the first place. It was a _brilliant_ idea. If he could just get another glimpse of him, or maybe even a touch from those long and lean hands of his, it might undue the ickiness of having Lotor hang all over him all night--

Shiro barely stopped himself from running into their server.

“What are _you_ doing back here?”

He looked around at his unfamiliar environs, his neck sore. “Um, where’s… where’s Keith?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

 _I don’t understand_ \-- “Is he… is he okay? Where is he?”

“Look, he doesn’t want to see you. Just go home and sober up,” the woman spoke with finality as she crossed her arms.

“He doesn’t? But what--”

“Go.”

Shiro felt static shocks throughout his body, unable to move until enough electric pressure built up for the words find purchase. It _couldn't_ be true. There was no way--“I… did _I_ do something wrong?”

_Is he upset because of me?_

The woman scoffed. “Why don't you ask your _boyfriend?_ You pretty boys sure move quick.”

Shiro stood flabbergasted, speechless, as the woman turned briskly on her heel and walked into the depths of what Shiro now recognized as a kitchen. Maybe he could come back tomorrow, but he wasn’t sure what he’d even say when he returned. He didn't think he knew Keith well enough for this sort of thing to happen. They only had, what--one actual conversation? And a short one at that.

 _Boyfriend?_ Keith had seen him go on a _date_ , for chrissakes. He must have known Shiro was single?

This perplexing roundabout of human emotion was like a polynomial whirring itself away in his programming, a problem most unsolvable.

Even _his_ intellect was no match for all this business.

With no other options he did as he was bid, leaving the bar and hoping he could return another day to clear things up.

He just didn't have enough data yet for this one.

\----

The next morning, Shiro woke with what felt like elephants stomping around in his stomach. He rolled over in bed--gingerly--and grabbed his phone from his bedside table. Despite his care, the elephants trumpeted as he shifted over, a sudden burst of nausea tunneling up from his stomach to his chest in a vicious swirl of heartburn.

“Ooh, fuuuuuck.”

He rubbed his stomach with one hand as he flopped back on his pillow and unlocked his phone. He had a few unread messages from Hunk, even more from Pidge, and queue of the usual e-mails that never seemed to care what time of day it was.

He blushed as memories of the previous night found purchase in his hungover brain cells, creating spontaneous bursts of images of Keith at a distance, angry but still so _beautiful_. The flash of Keith disappeared until he only remembered how Hunk had got a lead on whatever it was developing between him and a certain Red Lion employee.

Or _wasn't_ developing, as it were.

The sharp eyes of the woman keeping him from finding Keith took place of Hunk’s in his memories, the words she spoke still baffling to him even after the veil of intoxication had lifted.

 _What the hell was that all about? My… my_ boyfriend? _What boyfriend? What does someone like him even care that I have a boyfriend?_

_Which I don’t!_

He shook his head, burrowing deeper into his fluffy pillow. Not ready to face his barrage of texts, he went the safer route or checking his e-mails.

The three most recent were from Pidge, the first of which was titled _READ YOUR GOD DAMNED TEXTS._

“Gaaahh,” he groaned, lofting his stupid phone to the portion of the duvet that was unused and chilly.

_Is nothing sacred anymore?_

He shot up in bed when not a few seconds later the weekly Bumble alarm blared through the quiet of Shiro’s lonely apartment.

“Fucking… hell!” he yelled to no one in particular as he opened the little yellow-iconed demon app. The app’s theme color may have been yellow, but to him it felt like a fresh green light, Pidge and Hunk forcing his foot down on the gas pedal with far more force than he was prepared to deal with.

He appeased its requirements, making a few left and right swipes that produced no immediate matches. The word _purgatory_ flashed in his mind, imagining his e-presence captured in some prison waiting for the judgement of other Bumblers. That’s what all this felt like to him: a dark, dank jail cell, held in place by lines of code and… fucking _Lotor_.

If Shiro next saw Lotor during the heat death of the universe, it would be too soon.

The message center flashed with old notifications but Shiro still wasn’t ready to read them after the last creep he’d matched with and subsequently blocked.

Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this.

He returned on impulse to his e-mails as a distraction; while his innards felt like a zoo, he still had to make an appearance in the office--it was Wednesday, afterall--and replying to professional messages seemed like a great way to warm up and give his day a solid, productive foundation.

A few e-mails from random people offering their made-up theories of gravity and a great many more administrative e-mails to which he replied, archived, or deleted later, a freshly delivered message caught his eye. It was an invitation to give a talk for the local amateur astronomy club. He squinted, as if the words could divulge more than they said at face value--usually professors only got these kinds of invitations. He sighed as he contemplated his daytime schedule, but upon further inspection discovered it was for a special event called Astronomy on Tap that would be held late one Friday night before the start of next weekend.

Shiro knew he had no extraneous travel in the next couple of weeks, and the only conference on his calendar was still months out. Figuring a little beer and public speaking would help him transition better to talking with normal people about… normal things, he quickly sent his affirmative and got up to start his day--

“--oooh, _ooowwww--_ ”  
  
\-- _very_ slowly.


	4. Wingman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T/W: references to working yourself to death

That weekend, Hunk called Shiro into the office early on his _one_ planned day off for an astronomy _emergency._

“Dude, dude, I need you to proofread whatever I send you, pronto! Like, as in yesterday!” Hunk yelled, harried, as he ran by Shiro’s office en route to rally even more grumpy colleagues.

Shiro grunted his affirmative as he ran some of his own data reduction programs while waiting for Hunk’s text to come through. Though no grant applications were due, Hunk was currently in the midst of a publication war: someone in their department had heard whispers through the grapevine of another team in California working on a very similar project to Hunk’s. In order to win the war and not waste months of work, Hunk needed to get his paper submitted and published first _._

Journals had no interest in publishing the same research over and over, even if performed by different teams.

And as a post-doc who understood all too well the truth behind the phrase _publish or perish_ , Shiro was happy to lend a hand to his friend.

Well, mostly.

Echoes of his Tuesday night lingered, memories of Keith’s anger abating little as he’d waded his way through the work week. He told himself the last 12-hour days were necessary for his career advancement, but Pidge had had other ideas.

“ _I know what this is_ ,” Pidge had said as she poked her head into his office late Thursday night.

“ _Mm?_ ” Shiro had replied as he fussed with his command line script until it was just _perfect_.

“ _Hunk told me about some boy. So what gives? Ever hear the phrase thirsty_ Thursday _?_ ”

Shiro had stopped and turned around. “ _No? And… it’s complicated._ ”

“ _The only thing that’s complicated is how you deal with your problems, mister I can’t go out tonight, I’m going on_ MIRIAD _. Keep shoving them under your dirty ass office rug and you’ll never even get another shot at an Adam._ ”

He’d felt his fists clench as he looked down, but when he'd been ready give Pidge a piece of his mind, she’d already left.

_Low blow, Pidge._

Shiro was still a little angry she’d bring up something like that, especially because she didn’t know the whole story.

_And whose fault is that?_

Shiro sighed, his subconscious taking the reins as it led him back to the weeks and months leading up to the resounding clang of the door shutting behind Adam. Even now he had trouble recollecting the signs; there’d been no disagreements they battled through, or shouting matches over who was supposed to do what and when, or discussions of needs not being met.

Shiro had been neck deep in job applications for post-docs, writing personalized essays and accountings of his work for each institution, polishing his resume and curriculum vitae to a glimmering sheen, when he returned home late one evening to an alcove crammed with boxes and suitcases.

“ _You’re killing yourself,_ ” Shiro recalled Adam’s words when confronted, his usual even tone had been altogether warped by anger and frustration, his syllables sharp and unnatural.

“ _What? That’s… that’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?_ ” he’d answered, cringing now at his dismissive response, at the time more worried about a job application deadline for, well. His current position.

“ _You barely surface for air, let alone make time for me or anyone else. I even take your parents’ calls! You can’t expect me to wait around for a day when you won’t be married to your job_.”

“ _Adam, you_ know _this is a critical time right now, I have to focus hard now, otherwise--_ ”

“ _Otherwise_ what _?_ ” he’d shouted back, and Shiro still remembered the how the shock of Adam’s words froze him, his veins filling with shards of ice, worming their way through to ravage his heart. “ _You’ll, what? Not make it? Not be the best? Has it occurred to you that there are more important things in life?_ ”

“ _Adam, you know I love--_ ”

“ _Stop, just--just stop it. You spend a lot of time saying that, and--_ ” Adam’s stalwart veneer had broken in that moment, his voice cracking and quiet. “ _\--not a lot of time_ proving _it._ ”

“ _Adam, I… I can fix this. I thought we were in this together--_ ”

“ _No, Takashi, you’re on your little mountain all by yourself. How’s the view from the top?_ ” he’d spat, before grabbing his backpack and pushing his way to the door. “ _Someone will be by tomorrow to get all of this._ ”

An e-mail _ping_ snapped him out of day _nightmare_ , and he shook his head to dispel the ghost of Adam, still waging his war.

He always was incredibly stubborn.

Shiro gladly escaped by proofreading Hunk’s lines of text, clicking in annotations and comments as needed, even going so far as to remind Hunk of important references he’d left out and little factoids that could strengthen his arguments.

The paper made its way back and forth through all the members of Hunk’s publication team multiple times, and eventually everyone was satisfied with the work completed. The afternoon sun gleamed through Shiro’s office window by the time Hunk finally returned, his shoulders slumped forward in exhaustion. “Alright, man, the paper is submitted. Wanna grab a beer? On me?”

Shiro shook his head, arching his back in his chair for a quick stretch. “Nah. I’m gonna stick around for a bit and finish some things up here. But thanks, though.”

Hunk paused, and despite being the sleep-deprived one, his voice was laced with concern when he spoke, “You sure, bud?”

“Yeah. You go on and get some rest.”

“You _sure_ -sure? We can go to the Red Lion…” Hunk sing-songed.

“ _No_ , Hunk.”

“Are you ever gonna finish telling me the story about your mystery knight in shining armor? As in, maybe, you make him not a mystery?”

Shiro had been tight-lipped about the whole situation, especially after Keith’s refusal to see him. What was the point of rehashing how he felt about Keith? Even if he did have some kind of… feelings… he’d made it clear to Shiro those feelings weren’t returned.

To Keith, he was just some guy at the bar, another drunk customer.

Not to mention what Hunk and, well, really, what _Pidge_ would do if she found out there was someone who could distract him from work for the first time in, oh, _I don’t know--_

\-- _eons?_

“Not without a sworn affidavit you won’t say anything to Pidge.”

Hunk huffed out a breath. “Cruel and unusual, Shirogane. Cruel and unusual. Well… alright. You get a pass… for now. Thanks for all your help today. I’ll see you tomorrow? Monday?”

Shiro nodded, turning back around, and eventually Hunk’s footsteps shuffled down the department hallway and disappeared.

After trying and failing to get back into the swing of things, what with the remnants of Adam’s ghost haunting his office, he knew he wouldn’t be very productive without a change of scenery.

A little java couldn’t hurt, either.

He packed his things to cozy up in the mecca of his department, The Atlas, the coffee shop across the quad that boasted the best Americanos in the city.

He couldn’t agree more.

The walk there was pleasant, too, the greenery along his path well manicured and tended to in typical college campus fashion. Students on summer break lounged in the lush grass courtyards or tried their balance on slacklines. The enveloping trees swayed in the wind, the sounds of leaves brushing together carrying on the crisp, fragrant air that refreshed Shiro’s decaffeinated and sun-deficient skin, blowing away lingering feelings of guilt over the memory of Adam’s words. He took in a deep breath, looking forward to sitting in front of the coffee shop’s window as he worked with all this in his periphery.

He could only endure the view outside of his office window for so long, if it even qualified as one.

Halfway through the courtyard he heard a few loud barks from some nearby dog. Students brought their dogs--even cats--out on the quad all the time, so Shiro thought nothing of it until the noises seemed to get louder, accompanied by the rapid scrape of nails on the cement pathway. He looked behind him and saw a large husky-looking dog running towards him with reckless abandon, tongue hanging out the side of its mouth, slowing as it passed Shiro.

The dog then promptly sat in his path and barked at him.

“Well, hey there, fella,” he spoke in a voice pitched for animals as he bent over and scritched behind the husky dog’s ears.

The dog barked again, seeming to enjoy his ministrations, wagging its tail and drooling all over the walkway while Shiro succumbed to the animal’s psychological manipulation.

 _Okay, maybe I’m a_ little bit _of a dog person._

“Cosmo!” a familiar voice sounded out, and realization struck Shiro as sure as an arrow to his heart.

_Cosmo. A wolfhound? Could this be--_

He turned and watched as Keith quickly stopped his approach, staring at Shiro with eyes widened by surprise.

Not for long, though.

Those same eyes narrowed and the man before him held his gaze as he spoke in a low voice. “Come on, Cosmo,” Keith repeated, turning to go.

“Wait, Keith?… Keith!”

Keith stopped but refused to turn towards Shiro as he hunched his shoulders. Meanwhile, Cosmo hadn’t budged.

 _Good Cosmo_.

“Are you… um, are you okay? What happened, the other night?”

Keith turned on a sigh, glaring at Shiro. “I don’t know what you mean,” his flat voice sunk its talons into his chest, making him bleed.

“I don’t understand.”

Keith just watched him, as if all Shiro needed for everything to click into place was time.

“You looked upset, and your friend--”

“Acxa,” Keith corrected.

“Right. Acxa. She said you didn’t want to see me?”

Usually Shiro liked the quiet. He enjoyed hunkering down to work in his office on a Sunday morning, or the soundless escape of his dreams. He _lived_ for the rapt silence of his audience as he discussed the advancements he’d made in the field of astronomy.

He loathed it now.

Keith as good as ignored his question and whistled to Cosmo, beckoning his dog with his hand. As he turned Shiro felt abject panic; he knew he was out of options. He might not get another serendipitous chance like this save for parking his ass on a barstool at the Red Lion and waiting around like the hopeless dope that he was.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” he blurted, not sure where the hell _those_ words came from, and he figured the inhabitants of Andromeda could hear the plea in his voice from two and a half million light years away. _Don’t leave, please._

Cosmo followed-up with an encouraging _woof_.

_Good, good boy._

Keith slowly turned and met his eyes and Shiro was transfixed, stupefied as he watched the glare clear a path for confusion to take its place, his brow furrowed and his cheeks flushed with red. Keith’s eyes were a sight greater than anything he’d seen on any of his travels, even in Keith’s anger.

Or maybe the heat was making him psychotic.

“Look, can we, um… can we maybe… start over?” Shiro tried, and stepped forward, closer.

Shiro celebrated a small victory when Keith didn’t step back.

He held out his hand. “I’m, uh… Takashi Shirogane, but… everybody just calls me Shiro.”

A few breathless moments passed and Shiro started to think Keith wouldn’t take his hand.

He couldn’t help the smile that nearly broke his face when he did.

“Keith Kogane,” he replied, and the touch memory of Keith’s hand in his own over-warmed him through to his toes.

_Yeah, it’s definitely hot out here._

They shook briefly and let go, both silently considering each other, Shiro watching the light breeze rustle the freed wisps of Keith’s unruly hair.

“I, um--”

“What are--”

They interrupted each other, _again_ , and they started for a few seconds before bursting out in laughter.

Shiro would trade any of his favorite silences for that sound.

“I’m no good at this,” Shiro spoke lowly through his ebbing chuckles, his smile cracking his face.

“Me, um… me neither,” Keith said quietly, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

“What were you going to say?”

Keith breathed in, his hands coming together in front of him. “Um. Next week me and a few friends are going to this, uh… thing. Do you want to maybe… come with us?”

A chorus of _oh my god_ rang through his skull, and he stood speechless for a few seconds, brain searching for a pair of otherwise unoccupied cells to rub together.

Did he have anything next week?

Oh.

“Uhh, what day next week?”

“I think it's Friday or Saturday night, but I'd have to double check.”

He decided to never again agree to give talks while feeling vulnerable, hungover, and altogether unproductive. “Hmm… I can't on Friday.”

“Well, then, could you maybe… keep some time open on Saturday for me?”

_Anything for--_

“Yeah, that… that sounds great, Keith.” Shiro was proud of how even his voice sounded.

Their eyes held, and maybe it was a trick of the light cradling Keith’s face from the rapidly setting sun, but Shiro thought he saw a promise hidden within the bands of his irises.

A promise for what, he wasn't sure, but Shiro would keep up his end of any bargain struck here today if it killed him.

“Well, um, I have to go get to the bar, but… um, if the thing isn't actually on Friday, then…”

Shiro’s phone materialized in his hand, his body more ready for this than his long shorted-out brain.

_Oh God oh God oh fuck oh God--_

“Give me your number!” he choked out, thrusting his phone towards Keith, grateful for its existence for the first time in at least a month.

He only prayed the stupid yellow app kept its trap shut for a few minutes.

Keith tapped away at Shiro’s phone but soon stopped and grinned, legendary smirk returning with a vengeance as he looked back up.

“Bumble, huh?”

“Uhm, you… you aren’t… that isn’t--”

“Any luck?”

Shiro huffed a self-directed laugh. “Not really.”

The breeze rustled between them at Shiro waited, his attention rapt, for Keith's next words. Despite the shifting air, he swallowed as he endured the clawing tension between them, rooting him into the concrete underneath his feet.

“Has anyone else guessed?”

Shiro honestly had no idea what he was--”Guessed what?”

“Your lie,” Keith clarified softly.

Shiro jolted at the memory, tracing his eyes over Keith's brows, his cheeks, his lips--“No, just… just you.”

Keith coughed and returned Shiro's phone, looking down at his dog who still hadn’t moved an iota. “Alright, text me so I have yours.”

Shiro nodded, typing his name into the field and sending the message.

To his _phone._

 _Keith’s_ phone _oh my God holy_ shit--

Keith’s smirk turned into a full-blown laugh as he checked the subsequent _ping_. He shook his head, smiling. “See you around, Takashi Shirogane,” Keith spoke at a volume that just barely made it over his breath.

Was air a thing he was supposed to be taking into his lungs and like, using for oxygen or something?

Unbeknownst the effect he'd had on Shiro, who was too busy internally screaming to make any sort of reply, Keith whistled to Cosmo and walked off. Shiro silently thanked the best wingman he'd ever had, patting his hind as he finally obeyed his owner and slipped past.

Cosmo barked and took off in front of Keith, smart enough to know the way home, and Shiro continued on to the coffeeshop, prospects of productivity dwindling with the receding form of the out-of-this-world man and his aptly named dog.

Shiro halted in his tracks en route to coffee and covered his face upon realizing he all but demanded for Keith's number back there.

_Well, hell, it worked, didn’t it?_

\----

He was having a crisis.

A fucking _crisis._

Shiro contemplated moving out of the country to avoid the embarrassment of having to return Keith's text that came a few days later.

A few days Shiro spent feeling his phone burning holes through his pocket.

He had plenty of collaborators at Max Planck in Germany.

ASIAA in Taiwan?

Tons of places would have him. Maybe.

 **Keith >** _hey, turns out the thing really is this fri. thoughts on lunch?_

This shit was like Bumble all over again.

He typed in a bunch of letters, quickly erasing them. Every word in the English language was _stupid_.

How long was his message supposed to be? Keith didn’t seem to care about spelling and grammar, so… should Shiro?

What about _emojis_?

Shiro groaned but mustered the courage to finally send something, chasing away the thought of what Pidge would do if she found out he didn’t reply.

Not that she knew anything about this in the first place. He mentally chastised himself for not being completely honest with his friends, but feelings of anger lingered from Pidge’s comment about Adam.

 **Takashi >** _Yeah, lunch sounds great._

Keith replied barely a few seconds later.

 **Keith >** _wanna try that new pho place on main?_

 **Takashi >** _Okay._

 **Keith >** _noon saturday, takashi shirogane. don't forget_

Shiro gulped and set down his phone, needing to finish up his talk for Astronomy on Tap. He could not really hear the clack of his keyboard keys, the slap of his thumb hitting the spacebar, or the eager, repeated pinky jabs to the backspace button because he couldn’t focus if his life depended on it.

Was this a date? Originally Keith wanted to hang out with his friends; was it so obvious that Shiro had so few?

How much did Keith pity him, exactly?

But as he navigated the bends and curves of his mind, he noticed every exit pointing to exactly one place. A series of images, moments, so stricken into his mind he was sure they would never fade.

At the bar that night, weeks ago, Keith’s eyes had pulled him in, their depths speaking so much more to Shiro than just the man’s words did.

Those eyes, glaring daggers at him as he was assaulted by Lotor.

Those eyes… that held something so unspoken as Shiro practically begged for a do-over.

The spectrum of Keith’s eyes couldn't just be for friends, could they? Did Hunk or Pidge ever look at him like that?

Had _Adam_ ever looked at him like that?

Shiro sighed. It wasn't fair to lump Adam in with the other… four people or so he actually knew on a personal level, but as he thought back to the heights of their relationship, it wasn't those types of looks he remembered.

He remembered their camaraderie, the comfort of not being alone as they traversed up the technical, tricky path of making it as researchers in STEM. Had Adam’s eyes ever held that much promise?

That much warmth?

Or had it been something else?

_Did I really summit this mountain all alone?_

His phone beeped and he almost dropped it in his mad dash to check his-- _his--_ message. His heart fluttered, not yet convinced he was overthinking everything, a well-developed talent of his.

 **Pidge** **>** _What are you doing tomorrow?_

Shiro sighed at the guilt he felt for being disappointed.

 **Takashi > ** _Uh, what’s up? What time?_

 **Pidge > ** _After work. Punk needs updates._

 **Takashi** **>** _What ever do you mean?_

He knew--of course he knew, but there was a time and place for being willfully obtuse. Working from home on an ordinary Tuesday to avoid his colleagues was certainly one of those times.

 **Pidge** **>** _God damnit, Shiro. Don't do this. Is that why you're working from home today?_

_How did she know?_

**Pidge >** _Your IP address, obviously._

 **Takashi** **>** _I'll add mind reading to your list of talents._

 **Pidg** **e >** _He's alive! We are crashing. Tomorrow. 8pm. Don't forget._

_don't forget_

Shiro shivered.

 **Takashi** **>** _You know I have work to do._

 **Pidge** **>** _Oh, oh no, you’re breaking up--what? I can’t hear you?_

 **Takash** **i >** _Seriously?_

 **Pid** **ge >** _Beeeeeeeeeep_

Alright, so maybe he hated his phone again. He slid it under a few papers he had scattered on his coffee table.

He grabbed his laptop and leaned back on the couch, busying himself with his talk, knowing he had much to do before it would be ready on Friday. Despite his growing notoriety in the field, Shiro rarely faced the public, focusing more on visiting universities and conferences full of like-minded astronomers to get the word out about his skills as a researcher. The old adage was partially true in the realm of academia: _It’s what you know_ and _who you know._

As such, it had been years since he gave a public talk, and had to write it from the bottom-up.

Shiro rarely started from scratch anymore.

Job season was quickly approaching, a time period in which academic institutions across the world posted available job opportunities for everything ranging from special graduate student opportunities to tenured professorial positions. He could choose to stay at his current location for another year, burning more Jansky fellowship dollars, or he could pack up and leave, start from scratch, potentially for a better and brighter role. He contemplated leaving this little nook of academia in the big city, but for some reason the thought produced pangs in his heart and a cold sweat down his back.

His mind stopped for a moment, in utter shock-- _what is this? Have I ever worried about relocating before?_

He knew venturing into STEM to become a full-fledged researcher meant many sacrifices, primarily in the geography category. In a small field like astronomy, research candidates had to go to where the work is, be it a state over or across the globe.

A sudden, lurching panic took him over, and he shoved his laptop aside to sit forward, threading his stiff fingers through his short-cropped hair. His breaths turned shallow, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ward off the sudden constriction of his lungs and the accelerating newsreel of his consciousness.

Shiro had been through the wringer in academia, continuing to weather the beating of the incoming waves--but the tide never seemed to wane. On top of the pressures to keep publishing and writing _brand new talks_ and thinking about applying for jobs again, the thought of leaving this department tore him up in a way he wasn’t accustomed to feeling. Even if he chose to join the job circuit, it would still be over a year before he had to leave, but for the first time in his life he felt some internal resistance, leashing him to his little carved out alcove where he’d started to build a life.

He tried breathing through his uncharacteristic panic, but the act of panicking itself had him even _more_ freaked out. His fingers tightened in his hair, holding back tears.

_Was this what Adam was talking about?_

_Am I really… killing myself?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is such a dork I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. Poor guy :(
> 
> Thank you all so much for your kudos and lovely comments! I can't believe this reached over 100 kudos! Wahhhh I am so glad you are enjoying this!
> 
> Also, sorry for the wait, but it looks like I'll be able to maintain a 1-2 week schedule ad infinitum. Next chapter will be up next weekend :) As always, your support gives me life.


	5. Newborn Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter... I couldn't find a better place to split it up! The next one will be much longer & up next weekend! :) Again, thank you all for support & comments!

The next evening, Shiro obliged Pidge and cleaned his apartment, ready for a breather after a seriously full day of burying himself in data analysis and presentation slides. He’d barely slept the night before, and woke up at ass-early-o’clock, wide awake, his mind already spinning.

In his morning daze he chalked his little meltdown up to nervousness over having to explain himself and his… _whatever_ it was he was doing with Keith on Saturday to his friends. Still feeling a little too raw, as if the tears he’d cried had gouged angry, lasting troughs down his face, he forewent the office, not ready to face his colleagues.

As usual, he’d blocked out the new voices vying for space in his mind throughout the day.

 _You'd have to pack it all up again and go somewhere new,_ his not-so-subconscious had supplied, and Shiro had ignored it by typing faster.

 _You'll leave behind Pidge and Hunk._ Read more papers. Run more code.

_You'll leave behind--_

_No_ , he’d beckoned to himself, opening ancient, dust-riddled tombs to remind himself of the theories of stellar evolution he’d already had memorized.

That wasn't important. Nothing was.

_Right?_

The voices finally quieted with exhaustion, and feeling like he could think clearly for the first time all day, Shiro cleaned and went down the street to grab a sixer in preparation for hosting company for the first time in… ages.

A knock sounded, right on time.

“Come on in,” he yelled as he fluffed up his beaten and weary couch pillows.

Pidge and Hunk entered, toting plastic bags stuffed with all manner of processed and sweetened carbohydrates.

“Hey stranger! We come bearing sustenance!” Pidge spoke, the two beelining for the kitchen to drop off their wares.

“That's not sustenance, Pidge.”

“Whatever. Want a beer?” she asked over her shoulder at his fridge.

“Yeah, thanks,” he replied. He accepted a bowl of potato chips dashed with neon orange seasoning from Hunk before they all settled into Shiro’s couch. “So… a movie? I don't have Netflix--”

“Nuh-uh, we are talking first. Spill,” Hunk corrected as he sat forward, ready to intercept any gossip he could get his hands on. The two looked ravenous, starving for food of the non-consumable variety. Freaking _vultures_.

“What do you want to know?” he asked and placed a few chips in his mouth at once, hoping that his chewing would at least delay the inevitable answers he'd need to divulge.

It was true that he felt uneasy at sharing the inner workings of his mind with his friends, but if not them, then who?

“At the bar the other night, you started to tell me about a guy,” Hunk reminded.

“Did you tell--”

“Duh. I know all,” Pidge replied in an amused voice, but… she wasn't wrong. “After your date with the hunk astrologer, _Prince Charming_ came along--”

Shiro sighed. “It wasn't like that. He bought me a beer.”

The two _oooh-ed_ in unison.

“And we… talked.”

“And? Come on, dude!” Pidge exclaimed.

“He, um… he guessed my lie.”

“You mean like, in your Bumble profile?” Hunk asked around a mouthful of popcorn, Shiro getting momentarily distracted by a small piece spittleing out of his mouth only to land quietly on the floor.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“How did he know about your profile? Hey _wait,_ is he the server at--”

“No, no,” Shiro interrupted Pidge a little too quickly, his hands waving in front of him as if they could swat away her discovery, his eyes pleading hers. She missed very little, after all.

The lie felt bitter on his tongue. Despite his career-centric life and introverted tendencies, these two had stuck with him like glue the past couple of years. They’d been a unit: among daily life and research stressors, they’d banded together over cold beers or hot coffee when Pidge’s brother was deployed overseas, when Hunk’s uncle fell ill, and when…

… when Shiro needed a swift kick in the pants to join the Real World (TM).

Shiro knew he could be honest with them, but he still didn’t feel ready to, well. To tell them how he felt about Keith.

He still wasn’t entirely sure of it himself.

Sure, he wanted to see him, and the barest touch of his hands practically made him explode--not to mention his smirk that turned Shiro’s insides upside-down, and his piercing _eyes--_

\--but what did all that _mean_ , exactly?

Shiro couldn't plug this doozy into one of his computer programs and expect an answer.

Pidge narrowed her eyes at him and in that moment Shiro knew the jig was up. He waited for the next shoe to drop when Hunk made a snort of confusion.

“Wait, what? What server? Pidge?”

Pidge clenched her teeth. “Oh, nothing. My mistake,” she replied, her words directed at Hunk but her eyes unerringly on Shiro's.

 _Thank you_.

“Uh, okay. Wait, so at the Lion last time, you said you'd already screwed it up. What did you mean?”

Shiro looked down at his hands, the conversation he’d shared with Keith ringing clear, the reminder of Keith’s hands touching his own ghosting shivers up his arms. “I just… I can’t… make words work around him.”

“What about him?” Pidge asked.

“What do you mean--”

“Does he talk funny around you, too?”

“No, he was totally normal--wait,” Shiro stopped, thinking of a few instances of Keith stuttering. “Hm, most of the time he was fine.”

“Huh. Well, have you talked to him since?” Hunk followed-up.

Shiro just barely stopped himself from lying. He could tell them about the evening Keith seemed infuriated with him, but Shiro preferred to not even flirt with the possibility of bringing up Lotor.

It’s not like they actually talked that night, anyway.

“Actually, yeah, we ran into each other on the quad--we’re going to meet up this weekend.”

Pidge jumped out of her spot on the couch, nearly knocking over Hunk’s half-empty bowl of popcorn. “What?! That’s great! Where are you going?” she practically shouted, shaking with the effort it took her to stay in place.

Fearing an audience, Shiro shook his head, exhaling on a little laugh, “Hell no, Pidge. This is not some kind of… reality TV or stakeout opportunity for you.”

Pidge made a frustrated huff as she plopped back down, adjusting her glasses. “Fine, we won’t crash your little _date_ , but we want to hear everything! No more waiting around for a million years before telling us!”

Shiro cringed at yet another reminder that his friends deserved better than that from him. He nodded and looked at his hands, his fingers locked together.

“Well, um…”

The two waited, eyeing him, as Shiro struggled with his next words. “I don’t really know if… if it’s a date, or not.”

Pidge sighed, “Damnit, Shiro, you are _actually_ the worst.”

“Well how am I supposed to know? It’s not like he said _oh by the way, this is a_ date _date_ ,” Shiro defended himself, but maybe they should have clarified that the other day, when they were face-to-face?

Should Shiro text him and ask?

No, no, that wasn’t a conversation to have over impersonal black and white text messages.

Shiro thought, anyway.

“Are you going with anyone else, or is it just you two?”

“I think it’s just us, but…” Shiro shook his head. Keith’s original idea was to take him somewhere with his friends. “... I’m still not really sure it’s a date.”

“Well, it sounds like if he’s still willing to hang out with you, you didn’t already screw it up,” Hunk reasoned.

“Yeah, maybe I actually have a shot at another _Adam_ afterall,” Shiro muttered, unable to hold back the sarcasm poisoning his voice.

“Shiro--” Pidge tried, but Shiro interrupted her.

“Anyway, you guys going to that conference in Hawai’i in October?” Shiro was simply too raw from espousing all of his interactions with Keith to go down that road with Pidge.

Pidge took the hint, their conversation quickly veering away from The Tales of Shiro and Keith. They chatted about everything and nothing, ranging from Shiro’s talk on Friday to new patches to the server Pidge had just installed. Shiro felt the beer unwind him a little bit, allowing him to relax for the first time in several days, surrounded by innocent conversation and a surprisingly quiet inner consciousness.

Maybe talking about the whole mess that was his love life really did help ease his mind.

When the evening winded down and Shiro’s bedtime approached, his friends stood up and got ready to leave. As they headed toward the door, Pidge stopped and turned around, her hands busy in her jean pockets. She pushed her glasses up her nose, but they slid back, her face angled towards the floor.

“Look, um, Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry… for what I said. About Adam.”

“Pidge--”

“No, no, it wasn’t fair. I’m sure all of this is really hard on you, and you don’t deserve to hear that from someone in your corner. We’re just trying to help.”

Shiro felt a little smile pull through. “Well, you could make it up to me by removing the Bumble alarm.”

Pidge smiled back. “Not a chance, buster.”

Shiro smirked. “Worth a shot. Thanks, Pidge.”

They hugged, and Pidge slipped on her tennies, making a hasty exit to catch up to Hunk.

Shiro resolved to clean up tomorrow, confident that with all the emotional unloading he did tonight, a good night’s sleep was all but guaranteed and he didn't want to waste even a minute of it.

\----

Shiro looked around at the open-concept bar as the IT guy hooked his computer up to the projector. Located on the corner of a quiet, near-suburban intersection, it had glass walls that all but vanished, the ceiling-length windows tucked away to open up the space and let in plumes of warm summer air.

Patrons could easily step in through the windows from the street, the place a seamless part of the neighborhood itself, a small alcove offering beer and good conversation. Nearby trees home to various bugs and animals came alive with noise as the sun set, various squeaks and crickets from its inhabitants making him feel like he’d all but left the city.

The bar was called the Garrison, and though he’d never been there, he thought he might return sometime to get some work done. Because it was a little off the beaten path, the place wouldn’t be laden with shouting, drunken undergraduates once the fall semester began. Spacious tables great for hunkering down to work stuck close to the enclosed walls, complete with an eclectic mix of furniture and old-school, intimate 60-watt lighting glowing from vintage lamps. What attracted Shiro most, though, were the abundant power strips doting the bar’s floors.

Really, it felt more like a commuter café than a bar.

A bar hand slipped to the speaker’s area and asked Shiro what he’d like to drink, soon scurrying off to fulfill his request. Shiro paged through his presentation slides again and felt the familiar cocktail of pre-talk feelings stirring up within him--confidence, excitement, pride, all interlaced by overactive nerves that vibrated within him, amplifying each one to a fever pitch.

This was what he was _made_ to do.

Even if the talk wasn't as high level as those he gave at conferences, the same jitters were still there, and he had to fight the urge to pace as patrons started filling the bar, armed with drinks and curious glances at Shiro's title slide. He sipped his beer, avoiding any eye contact to keep himself from getting too antsy.

Before long the lights dimmed and an older looking gentleman with circular, Lennon-esque glasses approached the pulpit to make an introduction, holding an info card Shiro had filled out earlier on.

“Well good evening, folks! How we all doin’ tonight?”

The resounding cheers surprised Shiro, and he looked up to see that the bar was, indeed, packed to the brim.

The man continued, glancing down at the card as he spoke, “Well tonight we have the great pleasure of welcoming Dr. Takashi Shirogane from the City University for tonight's Astronomy on Tap. He's currently a post-doc and the youngest ever recipient of the… Jansky Fellowship? Impressive, young man. Maybe you can tell me what that is?” he continued as he glanced at Shiro.

The audience laughed, Shiro smiling along.

“Well anyway, you might be interested to know that his favorite color is red, and he's drinking a lager tonight. Nice choice, Jansky. He's gonna talk to us about some… what's this now? Newborn stars?”

Shiro chuckled beside him as his nerves dissipated, his mind and body fully locked and loaded into Presentation Mode. He took the offered mic and waited for the clapping to subside, looking out at the crowd before answering.

“Yes, that's right! Thank you all for the welcome. I admit I've been in my fair share of bars, but never to talk about newborns!” he joked with a little self-deprecating laugh.

He felt good energy as the audience laughed with him, already feeling in the groove despite just beginning.

“To start, if you have any questions or comments during the talk, feel free to shout 'em out. Don't be shy! So. You all might have wondered how the Earth came to be, nestled in our Solar System amongst the seven other planets--”

“Pluto forever!” someone shouted, earning them a good natured clap and a few hoots and hollers from the audience. Shiro swept his eyes around to find the speaker, but it was almost impossible with how dark the bar was.

“Haha, yes, whatever your planetary persuasion, they all have their beginnings right here, in what we astronomers call dusty disks.” Shiro flicked to the next slide, showing an artist’s rendition of a dusty disk--he’d show the goods-- _real_ images--a little later on.

“Tonight, I'll take you on a journey, from supernova to planetary life, the spark for which begins right in these newborn stellar nurs--”

His stopped his casual perusal of the crowd suddenly and held back a cough, his eyes catching on a figure sitting near the front, light from the projector dancing across his face.

Keith sat forward in his seat, his wide eyes sparkling with some new emotion Shiro had not yet seen from the man.

“Hey, doctor, are you okay?” some woman’s voice from the front row had his eyes snapping away from Keith.

_How long was I out?_

“Oh, um, yes… sorry everyone.” Shiro paused and took a sip of his beer to try to collect himself, but his traitorous gaze found its way back to Keith.

Keith was smirking at him, but for reasons Shiro couldn't describe, it felt encouraging. Familiar. Comforting.

Safe.

 _don't forget, takashi shirogane  
_  
And just like that, he was fine, he could _do this_ ; he could talk about his life's work like he had a million times before, in this airy little bar with the warm, summer breeze on his face. And though he had a beer in his hand, and no big wigs or hiring committees or patrons with fat checkbooks were sitting in the audience, it somehow felt like the most important talk of his life.


	6. Public Observing

“So… if you're a doctor, does that mean--’

Shiro issued a fake laugh, having heard this particular ditty only about, oh, a million times before. “No, no, I'm not _that_ kind of doctor.”

The talk went very well, the audience had been engaged and participated as he'd requested, shouting out throughout the talk and, as per usual, mobbing him afterwards.

He was pleasant to everyone of course, answering their questions with an unwavering patience that took years to develop. After all, if he could stick up for himself when renowned researchers publicly criticized him, he could deal with just about anything the public could throw at him.

Well. _Almost_ anything.

“So your PhD is in astronomy, huh?” Shiro heard to his right, turning to face Keith who seemed to have stolen a rare solo pocket of the bar amidst the bustle of patrons loitering around in conversation.

By the end of his talk, his emotional cocktail had started to run dry, the burn of any alcohol remaining little more than fumes. That is, until Keith came along to set them on fire. He took a deep, renewing breath before he answered, stoking the flames. “Hey, Keith. Is this what you wanted to take me to?”

“Yeah. Go figure,” Keith replied, his gaze meeting Shiro's head-on.

“Well? How'd I do?” Shiro followed up a little more quietly, leaning his head down to address Keith.

 _Only_ Keith.

Keith took a step and a sip of his beer, the two standing a little closer than they needed to be heard by one another. “I… it was okay. Your jokes, um, they weren't very funny.”

Shiro smirked. “You think they were just laughing to be polite?”

Keith just stood there for a few seconds, eyeing him with wide eyes, little mirrors that reflected the surprise Shiro felt within himself.

He'd never felt so confident talking with this man before. Maybe it was the high he was riding from delivering yet another successful talk, the command he'd had over the audience amping him up, but it was like a switch flicked and he wanted to keep it on and see where it led him.

Maybe if he had the confidence for a proper conversation, he'd be able to address other pertinent issues.

Like how Shiro could really use a map to find his way out of Keith's eyes.

Eventually Keith just shrugged and was about to speak before another patron pushed Keith aside to face Shiro.

“Wow, dude, way to give us the ol’ razzle dazzle! That was so cool! So is this, like, your actual research?”

Before Shiro could formulate a reply, Keith pulled the guy back a little. “Heh, don't mind Lance here, he's just a little excitable about all this stuff.”

Oh. One of Keith's friends.

“Oh puh- _lease_ , Red, like you didn't practically beg me to add you to the amateur astronomers’ mailing list.”

Keith rolled his eyes and pushed Lance away, but his feigned indifference was made obvious by the flush in his cheeks. Shiro pasted on a smile, forcibly dragging his eyes away from the sight of Keith. _Embarrassed_. “Lance, was it? You're an amateur astronomer?”

“You bet! I'm from the local astronomy club. You heard of us? We call ourselves the Alteans!”

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Sorry. I guess I haven't.”

It was a common misconception that research astronomers automatically knew anything about stargazing. Ironically enough, the real experts were called amateurs, groups of enthusiasts who made it their mission to perfect their knowledge of which objects in the sky were best observed each night, be it with the naked eye or through a telescope.

Shiro could barely remember the last time he even spotted a constellation, so narrowly focused on his research as he was. It was embarrassing, really.

There was once a time he wasn't so ill equipped for such a thing.

“Oh, that's ok! You can meet us all tonight!” Lance continued, undeterred. “We're actually all gonna drive out to a dark site after this to do some observing. You in, man? The club would go ape shit having a doc on board!”

Shiro looked over at Keith, who was looking back at him with small smile decorated by that lingering touch of pink on his cheeks.

_So… beautiful._

If 'we’ meant whoever plus Keith, Shiro was _so_ there.

“Well, sure, but I don't have a car. Could I get a ride?”

“Hell yeah, dude! My big old wagon can fit just about anybody!”

And that was how he found himself, hours later, crammed in the back of a station wagon, close enough to Keith to feel the warmth of his leg through his pants. Shiro crossed his arms, trying to shrink his broad shoulders in the hopes of making some much needed distance else risk dying of heat stroke.

It didn't really work.

Big old wagon his _ass._

Keith leaned forward to say something to the girl Shiro recognized from the Red Lion as Acxa, his movements accidentally pressing them a little bit closer. Shiro couldn't help but find his attention drawn to Keith's back, watching as his tee shirt rode up to expose a strip of skin near his backside.

Jesus _fuck_ Shiro could see the band of his underwear.

Shiro huffed a breath, willing away the semi that would be all too inconvenient in this stupid little wagon _._ Keith settled back, tucked in between Shiro and some guy that was too busy on his phone to take notice of Shiro's perversions.

“Hey, you okay, Shiro? You look a little sick,” Keith asked.

“Oh, um, no, just fine,” he practically squeaked, earning him a suspicious glare.

“Well loosen up, big guy, I don't bite,” Keith spoke quietly, a glint of mischief in his eyes.

_I am so, so screwed._

_Fuck it._

“Pity,” he whispered back, holding his gaze, feeling Keith go stock still beside him.

“We'll be there soon,” Lance practically shouted from the driver’s seat, and Shiro had never wanted something to both end and last forever at the same time.

\----

Shiro helped haul everything out, echoes of his undergraduate days in the school’s astronomy club helping him remember how _not_ to carry a Dobsonian telescope.

He stood in the clearing off to the side as they set up, knowing he'd be one cook in the kitchen too many. It wasn't long before he felt someone join him.

“Hey,” Keith said.

Shiro turned, upset he could barely see him. “Hey. You come out here a lot?”

“When I can. How long has it been for you?”

Shiro was actually grateful for the dark then, if only to hide his embarrassment. “Am I that obvious?”

“We don't get many hardened astronomers coming out here to observe with us.” Keith shrugged, smile evident in his voice as he continued, “Just a hunch. You _do_ look a little lost.”

“Yeah, I… I guess I am.”

“How did you get started in all this, then?” Keith asked quietly after a few moments of silence passed between them.

Shiro sighed. How long had it been since he thought about the beginning? After deciding down this road, it had been all about choosing the right schools and publishing the right research.

“Not much differently than that, I guess,” he gestured over to the crowd around the telescopes, the team still busy setting everything up under the shimmering, clear night.

Keith just waited, Shiro catching flashes of the purple in his irises depending on which way the wind blew.

Or maybe that was just his imagination.

Shiro opened his mouth to speak, still unsure of how to continue espousing his origin as a curious teenager who had somehow become entrenched in academia when someone shouted over at Keith.

“I'll be back, maybe they need help calibrating a telescope or something.”

Shiro heard him walk off and he craned his neck, finding company with the darkened sky coming alive with stars and the luminous band of the Milky way cutting across them, its stars too distant to pick out individually.

It was beautiful, no doubt, and it had been so long since he'd seen it. He remembered looking up as a child, wondering about the marvel of it all. He'd wondered how so much information could be gleaned just by observing, collecting what few pieces of light deep space objects granted poor, little Earth beings and their cameras.

After all, it wasn't like humans could simply go to those objects to further study them.

Yet, anyway.

The thought dredged up long ago echoes of excitement; Shiro had dreamed about hopping in a shuttle and blasting off to the closest star system, just to see what it was like up close. To experience near light speed travel. To push the boundaries of space and time in his explorations and bring back the secrets of the universe to Earth.

He supposed he spent the last ten years or so shackled to the Earth’s surface instead, trying to accomplish the same feat except with the glow of a computer screen on his face.

The group finished setting up and Shiro was surprised to find others trickle into the clearing, members of the public curious about space but unable to observe on their own. Club members began giving night sky tours with bright, powerful lasers to use as stellar pointing devices, voices carrying far in the clearing. Seeing that Keith became consumed with his duties as an apparent club member, Shiro decided to join in on a tour about to begin.

“Hey folks, let's get this party started! As a special treat, tonight we are joined by Dr. Shirogane from City astronomy! He's the real deal!” Lance announced to his tour group, pointing vaguely towards him in the darkness.

“You guys have me outranked out here,” Shiro replied truthfully. It had been eons since he even touched a personal telescope.

“And so modest, too! Alright folks, on this summer night, it's fitting that we begin with the _summer triangle--_ ”

Shiro got lost in his presentation, some unfamiliar feeling curdled in his stomach. It was a little sweet, a little sour, and Shiro tried to grab onto it but it kept slipping through his fingers. Either way, it made Shiro feel empty and nauseated, like he was missing something.

The feeling remained when the tour ended and Shiro automatically panned his eyes around in the darkness for Keith. Via the cast-off light of another person's headlamp (and a fair share of smartphone screens), Shiro saw him hovered over a telescope, talking animatedly with a guest, red headlamp jittering around as he moved. Bits and pieces of their conversation became clearer as Shiro approached, and he couldn't help but smile.

“--the great thing about Newtonian reflectors is that the optics are close to the base, distributing the tube’s weight to maximize stability,” Keith instructed to a glassy-eyed visitor as he pointed to the end of the telescope.

What was a guy like this doing working at a _bar_?

“Oh, right. That makes sense,” the person replied, unable to mask their lack of understanding in the flat tone of their voice. He walked off shortly after and Shiro jumped in.

“What have you got here?”

“The Orion Nebula,” Keith replied, turning off his headlamp. “We're lucky it's so late, we can just start to see her on the Eastern horizon.”

“Ah. I wrote a paper on its youngest stars back in grad school,” he said as he leaned down to take in the view of it through the telescope’s eyepiece, little bright dots surrounded en masse by a hazy substance Shiro knew to be clouds of gas and dust.

Despite the years he spent writing that paper, he’d never once looked at it live through a telescope.

“It's… it's beautiful,” he remarked as he straightened.

“You sound surprised.” Keith scoffed. “Don't tell me--”

Shiro’s reply rode out on a little laugh, “Yep.”

“Wow. You astronomers _really_ need to get out more.”

Shiro chuckled. “I don't disagree.”

“Explains a lot.”

Shiro reached forward to swat at Keith’s arm. “ _Hey_ ,” he complained, before busting out in laughter.

Keith snickered, pushing Shiro away from him in retaliation. Their amusement petered off into a gentle quiet, the only sounds between them the remnants of nearby conversations and the rustling of grass and leaves in the nighttime breeze.

“So… why are you working at just a bar?” he asked, the issuing told him that he'd maybe said the wrong thing.

_What else is new?_

_Maybe my post-talk high is wearing off…_

“It's not _just_ a bar,” Keith shot back.

“Sorry, I… I meant that you're really good at this, Keith.”

Keith was silent for a moment and sighed. He continued quietly, “It's okay. I get that a lot, but college isn't easy for everybody, for a lot of reasons.”

Shiro waited, giving time for Keith to expand.

“Really, I'm… more interested in the gear side of things. Engineering. Even… designing aircraft. I've wanted to build space ships for as long as I can remember, but… when my father died… the bar needed help. My mom needed help.  I couldn't just… let his legacy die.”

Shiro's stomach sank. “The Red Lion was your father's?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied, and Shiro heard the echoes of grief laden in his voice.

“I'm so sorry, Keith. That must've been really hard.”

A brief silence weighed upon them, but Shiro wanted to let Keith know it was okay to share with him.

If anything, he wanted more.

“Well, I'll have you know that I happen to have a bias towards the Lion.”

“Oh yeah? Why's that?” Keith said, perking up a little.

Shiro was surprised how even his voice sounded, for internally he was screaming as he spoke the words, “Well, you see, uh, I had this really cute server one night who gave me great advice for my dating profile.”

Keith barked out a laugh, his voice rich with mirth. “Was it, though? You went on a date with _appletini_.”

The mood turned back around as the two laughed at Shiro's misfortune.

“Thanks, Shiro,” Keith eventually told the ground.

Shiro wasn’t sure how close he was to Keith in the velvety darkness, but his words felt like a caress on his skin, validation for trying to seek him out and start things anew.

Maybe Shiro wasn’t the only one feeling these weird things. Wanting to be near the other, to get to know the other.

Bumbling through pesky heart palpitations when trying to get a few words out in their presence.

Shiro tentatively reached up, placing his hand on where he thought Keith’s shoulder might be. Successful in his search, he gave a firm squeeze but let go far too soon for his own liking, only wanting to tell Keith without words that he was there for him.

Shiro’s eyes feebly sought him out, trying to latch on and get a glimpse of Keith, needing to pair the heavy charge in Shiro felt in the air that resonated in his body with whatever look he was giving him in that moment. Shiro wasn’t sure what he would’ve done if he found those warm eyes again. The gallup of his heart spoke otherwise.

But there was little time to think about it much longer.

The crowd around them swelled, more and more visitors to their impromptu astronomy observing session filling the gaps between club member and telescope; soon Shiro found himself pressed close enough to Keith to feel the air shift about as he moved.

Not that he was complaining.

Keith addressed the new visitors in his queue, telling them in turn about the nebula in the telescope and adjusting it from time to time to keep up with the Earth’s rotation. Shiro just stood by and listened, soaking in the vibrations Keith's voice elicited throughout his body from so close to him, his explanations conveying the wonder and awe he so obviously felt about the subject matter. He got swept up in Keith’s excitement, old feelings dredging up from his days as a kid, just looking up at the night sky with his parents.

It wasn't long before an eager visitor shoved into Shiro’s back in the cramped observing area, but he couldn't hear the mumbled _sorry_ because the bump forced him right into Keith, his arms reaching automatically to grab onto the nearest object-- _person_ \--that could give him any purchase. Keith's hands shot out with remarkable speed to steady him, their imprint practically scorching his hips.

Shiro found his arms tangled around Keith’s shoulders, his body leaning into lithe, warm muscle. “I-I’m sorry, Keith--”

“It's okay, Shiro,” he whispered back as he helped him straighten out, Shiro feeling the words breathed out on his face.

Shiro knew he needed to extract himself from Keith--the man probably only wanted his friendship, for fuck’s sake--but he wasn’t ready to let go just yet. He’d never done anything this crazy before, but-- _yep_ , _fuck it_ _all to hell_ \--soon one of his hands slid up to find Keith's face, sure and steady in their passage, all the while Keith pulled him in closer, as if waiting.

_Expectant._

Shiro was sure he'd wake up in the morning with burn marks the shape of Keith’s hands on his hips.

Cloaked under the cover of darkness and hidden despite the bustling crowd, surrounded by so many people making a night of stargazing, Shiro threaded his fingers through a wisp of hair on Keith’s forehead, pushing its unruly strands back on his head. His senses were immune to the passage of time, the only thing he could perceive was the man in his arms: the soft mess of his hair, the warmth of his torso pressed up against him, the quick movements of his breathing against his arms.

If only he could see those _eyes_.

They shared the air between them, intertwined in each other in a moment Shiro felt beyond the physical. Though he couldn't name the impulse that got him cradling Keith’s head in his hand, his inexperience left him high and dry, unsure of what to do next. Nerves crept up under his skin the longer he held on, but the thing was, Keith hadn't let go, either.

“So… I take it you still want to grab lunch tomorrow?” Keith breathed out.

Something bubbled up within him, drowning him in something divine and dangerous for which his reservations were slowly eroding away, as the sharp, erratic surfaces of rocks in a stream.

Keith felt more like a tidal wave, really.

Whatever it was, Shiro was just grateful once more that Keith couldn’t see him just then, just knowing he was no longer able to mask everything it was that he felt for Keith from his face. He might have a way with words when it came to grant proposals, but he couldn’t seem to find any that fit these feelings.

_Desire? Need? Adoration? Is there a word for being flipped upside down and shaken around like a near empty ketchup bottle?_

“Yes,” he uttered, his voice deepened, catching on a sudden growth of brambles in his throat.

Keith shivered in his grasp, the two only releasing each other at the call of another club member announcing that everyone should start packing up the equipment to head out.

\----

Friday night slash Saturday morning traffic ablaze, Shiro found himself once more crammed in the wagon as they headed back to the city, the silence of exhaustion weighing heavily on the group. Lance, chipper as ever, chattered away at the unfortunate soul sitting in the front passenger seat.

Fatigue would have to wait, for while Keith had succumbed to the late hour, his head had slumped to rest upon Shiro’s shoulder, lighting his nerves up as sure as the city skyline. He looked down at the mop of hair, bobbing along gently with the shifts in the pavement and the old wagon’s underwhelming shock absorption.

Shiro glanced around the cabin and found that the two of them were tucked away, no one paying them any mind. His heart rate picked up as he turned his head, letting the strands of Keith’s hair brush against his cheek, his nose, the pleasant smell of his shampoo wafting through to his lungs. Shiro wanted to kiss him, any part, _every_ part, even just his _hair_ , but he wasn’t sure Keith would welcome the gesture. He thought back to the clearing, where Keith hadn’t pushed away from his touch. The impulse to cradle Keith again in his arms returned with a vengeance, and he was--

“What are you waiting for, you dumbass?” a whisper issued from the seat in front of him.

Startled, Shiro sat up straight, nearly knocking Keith’s resting head from his shoulder. Mortified by his obvious attention to Keith, he gulped, staring back at Acxa.

“Do it.”

“Do… do what?”

Acxa rolled her eyes and turned back around, likely deeming Shiro unworthy of a further explanation.

He thought he understood, anyway.

Steeling himself with a deep breath, Shiro gently leaned away from Keith to slip his arm from between them and curl it around Keith’s shoulders. Keith mumbled with the movement, shifting around in his sleepy daze to get more comfortable, turning and nestling his face into Shiro’s neck. Shiro held his breath as Keith’s hand flopped forward, landing to rest on his thigh.

 _Shit_.

Shiro closed his eyes and gave into the want, the _need_ to hold him closer, pulling so that Keith was flush against him, resting his chin on his unruly hair. A choppy exhale escaped him when Keith’s hand tightened on his leg, his exhalations little puffs of warmth on his neck.

The car slowed down but time only sped up as Lance rounded the corner to an apartment complex far outside the city.

“Keith, you’re up.”

Keith stiffened but didn't move, shifting only a few moments later to tuck his face higher, higher up Shiro’s neck until his lips brushed the curve of his ear.

“I think you’re cute, too,” he whispered for only Shiro to hear.

And then he was gone, and he took Shiro’s brain with him.

“Where you headed, doc?”

“Um, just, uh. The um. Campus is fine?”

“You asking me or telling me, bud?” Lance called skeptically from the front, followed up by an audible smirk from Acxa.

“Yeah, just… take me to campus, please.”

“Got it, doc. We got a few more before you, is that alright?”

“Y-yeah.”

Now alone, Shiro sat stunned in silence for a few minutes before realizing he hadn’t checked his phone since his talk. He pulled it out, squinting his unadjusted eyes at the blinding blue hue, reviewing his messages and various e-mails. It appeared he wouldn’t have to begin the start of yet another weekend with anymore astronomy _emergencies_.

Several messages had come in from Pidge, asking how his talk went and what he was doing to _prepare for tomorrow_.

As if he had any idea himself. He was so wrapped up in what just happened that it didn’t occur to him his lunch date-- _date?_ \--might require some planning. Was more supposed to develop from this whole thing now? Was he supposed to make a move? What were the rules? Were they just friends going out to lunch, or weren’t they?

He still felt the impact of Keith’s words and he shuddered anew in the car despite the warmth of the back seat. With the newsreel of questions ringing in his mind, Shiro recalled all the moments that they seemed unsure about each other, and others….

… when they tested the boundaries, trying to suss out where they both stood. Was Shiro too close, looking too deeply into Keith’s actions? Did he need to take a step back?  
  
Even from an objective standpoint, being called _cute_ had pretty serious ramifications.

But was he cute in a _I want to fall asleep in your arms on the ride home_ kind of way, or just in a friendly way and all that closeness was just out of convenience? It was late, after all.

Hunk had fallen asleep on him in coach en route to a conference once or twice.

Shiro shook his head. He might be socially inept outside of his field of expertise, but he had a gut feeling about this. This was different. He shot off a group message, not thinking too much about it before hitting send, figuring there was really only one way to find out.

 **Takashi > ** _He called me cute. What does that mean?_

 **Hunk > ** _Wait who? When? Did you go on a date, Shiro?_

 **Pidge >**HE _HE? EXCUSE ME I THOUGHT YOU WERE MEETING UP TOMORROW?_

 **Takashi > ** _Yeah, but we ran into each other tonight at my talk._

 **Pidge > ** _No fucking way. Is he a nerd, too?_

 **Takashi > ** _Language._

 **Takashi > ** _And… maybe._

 **Hunk > ** _Wait the guy was at your talk?_

 **Pidge > ** _Look alive, Hunk!_

 **Takashi >** __ _What should I do?_

 **Pidge > ** _When did he call you cute? DEETS!_

Shiro typed, erased, and re-typed for several iterations before his new mantra of _fuck it_ took over once more.

 **Takashi > ** _When he woke up after falling asleep on me._

 **Pidge > ** _SHIRO, I CAN’T EVEN WITH YOU!_

Shiro sighed, feeling the words come forth through his fingers, words he hadn’t uttered aloud to himself, even in the private confines of his apartment.

He’d barely even thought them, afraid that as soon as he did, things would change: Keith would realize that Shiro was just a loner, up on the summit of his academic mountain, no time or energy for anything or _anybody_.

He would leave.

 **Takashi > ** _I think… I really like him._

Just like Adam did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #sns I couldn't really wait until the weekend to post this one THESE BOYS ARE KILLING ME
> 
> Also, there might not be another update until sept. 28/29 ish? Life and all that!


	7. Pho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro and Keith go on a date?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs in this one, please check tags xoxo

Shiro got to the pho place super early, his schedule ruled by the comings and goings of the public transportation system. He wasn’t sure if Keith had already arrived so he went inside, letting the host know he’d need a table for two.

He was seated and two full glasses were hastily brought over, ice bobbing and splashing water onto the table. Shiro wiped up the mess and inspected the place; it was small but tidy, and despite its recent inception it was full of patrons slurping away at their massive bowls of fragrant pho. An earthy humidity with a dash of chili spice hung in the air, and Shiro’s stomach conjured an answering gurgle, looking forward to the hot meal despite the oppressive heat outside. He pushed at his stomach with his hand, hoping it would shut up long enough that Keith wouldn’t hear it.

 _What am I even_ doing _here?_

He’d gotten into bed last night, his heart dancing in happiness, making him too restless and agitated to sleep. He’d kicked the sheets away, memories of Keith’s warmth heating his bed beyond his comfort levels, stoking a level of arousal he hadn’t felt in _years_. Shiro had worked himself up so much at the thought of that soft hair, that sly voice, and the skin above Keith’s _fucking_ underwear that he’d started palming his dick through his boxers. He’d imagined taking Keith’s face in his hands and kissing him in the field like he’d really wanted, or even worse: pulling Keith’s body across his lap to straddle him in the back of that old station wagon, witnesses be damned.

It wasn’t long before he’d gotten up to finish the job with the help of some lotion and tissues in the bathroom, Keith’s azure eyes flashing in his brain all the while.

The bell over the restaurant door knocked him out of his scandalous memories, and one look at Keith had him cursing himself, shifting his eyes to pay especially close attention to the wooden whirls embedded in his table.

_How am I supposed to look at him now?_

“Hey, Shiro,” he heard, along with the scrape of a chair across the tile.

Shiro wondered if he had _hey, I got off thinking about you last night_ tattooed on his forehead.

It sure felt like it.

“Hi. Um. How are you?” he asked, finally looking up at Keith.

The man paused, chair still in hand, confusion etched on his face. “Uh… is everything okay?”

_ACT. NATURAL._

“Oh yeah, heh, everything’s fine! Thanks for coming.”

_Thanks for coming? Shiro, what the fuck?_

The corner of Keith’s lip turned up as he sat across from him and somehow, he knew everything would be okay.

_Maybe._

“So, um, do you have to work tonight?” Shiro forced out.

Keith opened his menu, glancing around. “Yeah, but Saturday night has the best tips, so.”

“Oh! That makes sense be--”

“Shiro.”

He gulped as they stared at each other across the table. “Yes?”

Keith’s eyes dragged across his face and Shiro fought the impulse to duck and cover, suppressing a twitch in his eye as Keith finished his perusal.

“I like you,” Keith spoke quietly, suddenly.

“Wh-what?”

Keith shook his head, laughing lightly as he looked back down at the menu. “So calm down, will ya?”

Shiro released air he didn’t realize he was holding as those words slowly sank in, buoyed by a web of nerves, hastily spun ever since Shiro had spotted him in his audience. He’d been doubtful that Keith had actually meant to call him cute in _that_ way, but Shiro could remember the breathlessness of his voice and the accidental touches of his lips to Shiro’s ear that had him practically shaking.

Shiro felt like he’d just been slapped in the face by Occam’s Razor. Did _just friends_ really say that to each other? Did _just friends_ really say that to each other on _not dates_?

He busied himself with his menu, the options he read forgotten almost immediately as his own words tried to claw themselves out of the maze of his poorly timed self-reflection.

They didn’t make it.

Was he supposed to say it back? He’d conceded that he _like_ liked him but how exactly was he supposed to say it? He couldn’t just blurt it out like Keith did! If that’s even what he meant! How did he and Adam get together, anyway? Did one of them confess? Or did they just sort of… happen?

Shiro couldn’t remember.

His thoughts were halted when a woman in an apron came by to take their orders, and Shiro just ordered whatever Keith got with a _make that two_.

They were left alone again, and a glint in Keith’s eye preceded his next words, “So, uh. Shiro. I got the layman's version of your work at the talk, but… would you tell me a bit more?”

Shiro shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah, of course! I’m investigating nearby stars that are surrounded by disks of gas and dust. I make computational models of the disks to see if there are any perturbations--like the kinds we’d see if planets were forming.”

Keith took a sip of his water and nodded. “Huh. Why do you think those types of stars are forming planets, and not others?”

“Well, we think stars form out of a giant pile of, well, rubble, basically, a bunch of leftover debris from previous stellar generations lying around in the outskirts of galaxies. As the material collapses, the forming star spins, and it whirls up the gas and dust surrounding it, flattening it into a disk. We think planets form out of that debris,” he spoke, spinning his finger around in a circle to accompany his words.

“So… planets are made out of whatever the star doesn’t use?”

Shiro nodded, leaning forward on the table. “We think lighter materials like hydrogen and helium get shoved back to the outskirts of each debris disk by the star’s radiation. That’s why planets closer to their host stars, like Earth, aren’t mostly hydrogen! It’s part of what we call the _solar nebula theory_ \--”

Shiro didn’t realize he was waving his hands around so much until one of them thwacked his glass of water, knocking and spilling it all over the table.

“Oh, my god,” he said and he partially stood, reaching for his woefully small table napkin.

Keith shot up and grabbed a few from an adjacent table, helping to sop up the mess.

“I’m so sorry about that,” he said after sitting down, wiping his hands on his pants, telling himself to _keep them there, you idiot._

He guessed if his goal was to be himself around Keith that he was doing a spectacular job of it.

Keith just laughed and Shiro almost forgot what they were talking about as he mapped out the crinkles around Keith’s eyes. “So. Planetary disks. Have you found any yet?”

“Oh, um. Yeah! Absolutely. I’ve more than doubled the number of targets on the candidate list since moving here.”

Keith breathed out a chuckle. “Of course you have.”

Keith sat back, resting his hands on the edge of the table. As a comfortable silence fell over them, Shiro searched his web of nerves for his earlier concerns only to find just scrapings of doubt and anxiety left, minute crumbs still tangled in the thick, stretchy strands.

“You… you did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

The lot of his concerns were nearly gone, untangled and swept away by the confidence he’d engendered for his own work over the years.

A confidence Keith somehow knew to tap into.

_Who… who is this man?_

Keith flashed Shiro a dimple that only came out when he smiled. “Well you _are_ a total nerd.”

Shiro scoffed as butterflies filled him up inside. “Like you aren't?”

“Please. I'm pretty sure P-h-D means _pretty huge dork._ ”

Shiro rubbed the back of his head with a palm, laughing at himself. “So… my work doesn't bore you to tears?”

“No, actually, I’m really interested. You can’t grow up wanting to build space ships without being a little curious about space itself, right?” Keith leaned forward on his elbows, shifting in his seat, the wonder of a thousand ages evident in his voice. “I've always thought about what was out there, and if I could somehow… _reach_ it. We’ve already found so many other Earth-like exoplanetary systems, right? And what, there's billions of stars just in our own galaxy? Maybe the types of ships I’d build could help us travel to new stars and planets, you know?”

Shiro paused, eyeing the light in Keith’s eyes, feeling his words stoke the long cooled embers of that boundless curiosity within himself. Keith had told him he needed to help at his dad’s bar instead of going to school, but…he couldn’t picture Keith letting something like that hold him back. Shiro needed to know more but didn’t want to throw water on his fire.

_I like you._

“Do you think… you can ever go back to school?”

Keith looked down and shrugged, letting out a sigh, and Shiro thought he saw steam escape from his body. “Yeah, but…”

Shiro waited, watching as Keith fumbled his unused silverware in his hands.

“I can’t leave my mom to the bar all by herself,” he finished quietly.

“She works there, too?”

Keith nodded. “Oh, you’ve probably seen her around. To keep things from getting weird in front of customers, I just call her her name instead of _mom_.”

“Have you asked her about it?”

Keith sliced a quick glare towards him before responding, taking Shiro back to that night Lotor draped himself all over him like clothes on a hanger. “Well, _no_ , but I know how hard it is for her. My dad only died a few years ago. I can't just up and leave her, too”

Shiro took pause at his choice of words and let Keith change the subject.

“What about you? Are your parents nearby?”

“No, actually, they’re across the country. It’s… sorta been a while since I’ve seen them,” Shiro spoke through a few pangs of guilt.

“How is it that you’ve been to every continent but you can’t scrape out a few days to see your parents?”

_He remembered that, too?_

“Time just got away from me, I guess. I didn't even realize it had been so long until recently.”

“You really are a workaholic, huh?”

“That’s what they say,” Shiro replied with a self-deprecating smile, feeling the heat on his face.

“Well if I was a scientist like you, I’d want to work all the time, too,” Keith spoke with a nod as he unfolded his napkin on his lap, not realizing what he’d just up and done to Shiro.

Shiro just sat, rendered speechless, as their waitress carried the burden of two large bowls filled with their orders, an array of colorful vegetables and sinful smelling meats steeping in clear broth.

Shiro could only watch as Keith decked out his bowl with various fixings from the table and started eating. How many people just took what Shiro did for a living in stride? Keith expressed his interest in his work, sure, but it didn’t stop him from teasing him or telling him off.

But Keith didn’t know the whole story, did he? Adam knew. Adam shared that same passion, understood what it took to get to the top, and yet here he was: alone.

Keith waved a hand in Shiro’s face, startling him from his thoughts. “Everything okay?”

“Y-yeah, sorry. Is it good?”

“Come back down to Earth and find out yourself,” he spoke with his lip twisted up in a smirk.

Shiro pushed aside the downward spiral of his thoughts and considered his meal. Soup style dishes were not exactly 10/10 choices for dating fare, and Shiro ate daintily at first, trying not to slurp or make too much noise, but that all ended when it became apparent Keith had no such reservations.

“You said you've been at all the continents, right? Even… Antarctica?” Keith asked after a time before he ushered in another mouthful of pho.

Memories of his skin drying to death and his scant few minutes of shower allotment per week came back to him in full force. “Ah, yes. Astronomers built a telescope at the South Pole a little over a decade ago _._ ”

Keith leaned forward, his eager eyes blown wide. “Whoa, really? Did you get to observe any new planetary systems or anything while you were down there?”

Shiro was physically taken aback by Keith’s enthusiasm once more, unconsciously putting some distance between them by sitting up straighter. Despite the beckoning steam coming from his food, Shiro had Keith’s undivided attention.

“Well, no. I installed a camera that I helped build back in grad school. The installation only took a few weeks, but because of the flight schedule I was stuck down there for months.”

“You get to go down there for gear stuff, too? It must have been so fun!”

Shiro rewound his memory, trying to elicit what he’d felt at the opportunity to hang out in perpetual ice and snow. The idea of going down there now just seemed like a burden.

“I guess so,” Shiro replied.

“Wh- _what_? You _guess_ so? How many people on the planet get to do something like that, Shiro?” Keith asked, his hands slapping the table, pho all but forgotten.

Shiro shrugged; to him, it had been just a means to an end--a resume padder to make him more attractive for postdoctoral positions. But the look on Keith's face, the burning desire and indignation swirling about in his eyes like oil and vinegar made him wonder where exactly he went wrong.

What happened to the kid filled with wonder and awe, looking up at the stars with his mom?

 _He’s sitting across from me_ , Shiro thought to himself.

“Well, what’s it called so I can look it up later?”

“The _South Pole Telescope._ ”

Keith paused, his eyes narrowing in judgement. “Wow. Creative.”

Shiro laughed. “You think _that’s_ bad? There was once a proposal for a telescope to be built called the OWL. Can you guess what that stood for?”

“Optical… something?”

“No, that would make too much sense. It was the _Overwhelmingly Large Telescope._ ”

Keith closed his eyes and laughed, the sound ringing through Shiro like a bell.

“You better not ever get a cat or anything,” Keith forced out through his tapering giggles, eyes squinted with mirth.

“Maybe I'll just get some help from you on what to name it, then,” Shiro replied warmly, his ears hot and still ringing.

Keith held his gaze and smiled, the two just taking each other in for a few short moments. The restaurant humidity surrounded them like clouds, insulating them and the electric _something_ pulsing back and forth them. Shiro let the feeling light him up, how much he enjoyed Keith’s company, how addicted he was becoming to the spark of his presence, and the joy of finding all that was within him mirrored in Keith’s eyes.

Though he didn't think he’d ever wanted to return, what he wouldn't give to see the look on Keith's face as he stepped off the propeller plane with nothing but a sheet of ice and humanity’s small imprint of civilization to keep him company.

“But seriously, Shiro. The South Pole? That's pretty amazing. I've barely even left the country. Does Canada count?” Keith spoke down to the table a little more quietly, blocking Shiro’s view of gray and purple.

Shiro grinned. “I think _maybe_ I can make an exception.”

As they got serious about eating their meals, Shiro started thinking about his upcoming schedule, not at all wondering when he could see Keith again. _Nope._ August was just around the corner, and that meant the beginning of job season and a big decision he’d have to make; he felt impatient at the need for a decision, at the paltry time he had left to learn him.

He also dreaded the campus filling back up with masses of undergraduates, but if Keith became one of them, he guessed he wouldn’t mind so much.

Shiro looked back up at Keith, who had resumed shoveling his remaining noodles in his mouth with expert precision. Shiro grinned, finding it impossible that many students--or even hardened researchers--held within them the booming bonfire of passion he seemed to foster with barely a thought.

Those glimpses of the joy Keith revealed about his ambitions were a bit infectious to Shiro. Though he’d been looking forward to this date all week, antsiness bubbled in his gut, and he started wondering exactly when his next conference was so he could put together more research and travel yet again.

He couldn’t remember the last time he was excited about a conference.

They finished their meal, and Keith turned as he held the door out of the pho spot for Shiro. “So, um, I’ll text you sometime?”

“Yeah, sounds good, Keith.”

Shiro watched Keith amble off with a smile, but it wasn’t long before the man turned back around to toss a final thought Shiro’s way.

“You know, I’d be careful throwing around all that solar nebula theory and South Pole stuff. You might scare them off.”

“Who?” Shiro shouted back.

“Your dates!”

Keith winked and turned. Shiro just stood there, watching Keith strut off, his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish out of water.

“What?” he eventually spoke to no one in particular, Keith having long since escaped his field of view. Confusion tore through him as he tried to fit what Keith just said in the context of everything else that happened between them.

Something didn't add up.

“Everything okay, bud?”

Shiro jumped, nearly bumping into a stranger who had seemingly materialized on the sidewalk.

“You’re sorta blocking the door, could you move?”

“Oh… right. Sorry.”

 _Dates?_ Shiro stepped back and began his trek towards the office, paying just enough attention to his surroundings to not get hit by a car. If he was honest with himself, the thought of Keith going on a date with anyone else riled up his insides with jealousy. Acid twinged the back of his throat as he wondered why Keith would even say such a thing.

 _Are we just… friends? Was this not_ \--

Shiro shook his head, willing his inexperience blinders off. There was no way the things Keith had said and done to him could in any way be misconstrued as _just friends._

But did his science talk actually turn him off?

Or worse, did he think… Shiro wasn’t interested in him?

Shiro thought back to his academic mountain and chewed on his lip.

Hours later, after staring at his computer screen at work and finding no more success at home, a strong, impatient resolve had him digging through his closet to find some nicer clothes. He needed to make sure Keith knew. He couldn’t let there be any doubt.

_I don't want any stupid dates._

_I just want_ you.

And Shiro knew just where to find him.

\----

Yeah, he was nuts.

And he had it _bad_.

Shiro adjusted the collar of his shirt as he rounded the last corner to the _Red Lion_. Being a Saturday night he knew it would be busy, but if he could just catch a moment alone with Keith, he could let out the words that felt ready to burst through his throat and out his mouth.

And the closer he got to Keith, the more urgent the words became.

A cool draft of air hit his face as he entered, and he saw Acxa at a podium marked with the words _Please Wait To Be Seated._ He looked around at all the patrons, loitering around the bar and seated at various tables, their loud conversations filling up the space.

Now that he arrived, Shiro felt a twinge of embarrassment. What was he doing? Was he going to waltz on in and sweep Keith off his feet or something?

_Nothing for it now._

“Hey… Acxa?”

The woman turned her head, recognition lighting up her eyes. “Hey there, big boy. Looking for Keith?”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Um… yeah, if he’s not too busy?”

“Well, it just so happens he’s on break for twenty. You can probably find him out in the back alley having a smoke.”

Shiro’s heart thumped faster. “Through…”

Acxa turned and pointed to the set of double doors leading to the kitchen. “Through there, then make an immediate right. It’ll be the first door you hit down the hallway.”

He thanked her and took off, moving slowly through the kitchen doors but otherwise letting his feet operate at their intrinsic _I want to see Keith_ pace.

Breathless, he ignored the curious stares of the kitchen staff and his doubtful frontal lobe and opened the back door, smoke wafting into his lungs. He turned towards the smell as if it were a homing beacon and squinted, halting his movement, unsure of what he was seeing.

Far down the alleyway, two figures were encased in shadow, backlit by a streetlamp at the alley’s end. One rested their lean body up against the brick wall with the burning flare of a cigarette in their hand.

_Is that… Keith?_

The other… the other towered over Keith, invading his space, one arm up against the brick, their face close-- _too_ close--to the crown of Keith’s head and that messy, soft hair of his.

The hair he’d only just felt against his face the night before in that stupid car.

That didn't look like _just friends_ on _not dates_ , either.

Shiro just stared, his heart sinking into a deep chasm that opened in his stomach as the taller man leaned closer to Keith, taking the cigarette from his hand and tossing it aside.

The man took a step forward, leaning his body in and reaching up a hand to Keith’s face; Shiro knew what was going to happen next as his breath was yanked from his lungs. His earlier resolve all but deflated and he briskly turned to leave the two to their moment.

_What were you thinking, Shiro? You knew he couldn't possibly be interested in someone like you--_

“What the _fuck_? Don't you _touch_ me!” Keith's familiar voice, morphed into a frantic shout, rang down the alley and Shiro stopped cold.

A scuffle sounded behind him and he bolted without thinking towards the two, his almost-new dress shoes scuffing against dirt and old cigarette buds, internally kicking himself like the idiot he was. The man clutched at Keith’s wrist, tugging him into the line of his body, Keith struggling and pushing against his grasp.

As Shiro came upon them Keith turned his head towards the sound of footfalls, his face screwed up in alarm, the purple in his irises all but gone in his wide, frightened eyes.

_That motherfucker--_

“Shiro!”

A cool rage suffused him as he grabbed at the hand still holding Keith, prying at the fingers and retching him away. He followed up with a vicious right hook to the side of the startled man’s head, and as the guy dropped like a pile of bricks, Shiro recognized their long, white hair, his flowing strands disheveled and dirty on the alley floor.

He guessed he didn’t see him on his approach, what with his attention squarely focused elsewhere.

On _Keith._

“... _Lotor_?” the name came out of him, wretched and brusque with his anger as he faced him down.

Lotor turned over on his side and looked up as he felt around the side of his head, testing the ground zero of Shiro’s punch. “Shiro? Is that you?” Despite being laid out, he managed a smirk. “Aha, jealous, are we? It’s not my fault I got to him first--”

Shiro made to bend down and grab at his shirt, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Keith spit out, and Shiro turned at the sound of his voice in shock.

_He sounds… angry?_

“Keith? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. This isn’t your business. You should go,” Keith spoke, his staccato sentences little jabs at Shiro’s heart.

Shiro mapped Keith’s unreadable expression with his eyes, seeking out some evidence of the flame he knew Keith held within him.

“But Keith, he was--”

“I said I was _fine_. I had it handled,” Keith bristled, stomping on the cigarette Lotor had flung to the ground, turning to hasten his way back to the bar.

“Wait, Keith--” Shiro rushed after him, all the way through the kitchen door that nearly shut in his face, down a tiled hallway and to a door Shiro didn’t recognize.

Shiro stepped through into some kind of office and let the door shut behind him. Keith stood in front of a desk with his arms around himself, the bare 60-Watt bulb casting garish shadows about his proud, lithe frame. He prepared himself for a verbal lashing, another issue to leave, another stab in the gut with a flash of his glare.

But something told him not to leave.

Keith needed him, somehow.

“Keith, what’s going on?” he asked, and now that the anger was gone, his words came out husky, quiet. He stopped himself from taking another step as he watched Keith hunch over to lean on the messy office desk in front of him, his shoulders shaking with a silence that screamed through Shiro's insides.

“ _Shiro_ ,” Keith whispered, his voice miserable, breaking on the second syllable.

He rushed forward and turned Keith around to wrap him up, pulling him tight into the cradle of his arms, resting one of his palms on the soft hair at the crown of his head.

Keith was stock still for only a moment before he clutched at Shiro's shirt, the trembles of his entire body intensifying. Keith pressed his face into Shiro's shoulder, his chest heaving with his labored breaths.

When the first whimper escaped him, Shiro just squeezed him tighter. “I got you, Keith.”

They stood there for a time, the quiet office masking the sounds of the Saturday night beyond them, a busy kitchen working to serve its bustling mass of patrons. Keith's sniffles were barely audible over the dampened noise, but Shiro felt them viscerally, his heart clenching in sympathy and something else he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Shiro just held on, grappling with everything he was feeling--the care, the foreign need to protect, defend, the warmth, and damnit, the _desire_ \--for Keith. He just held on as Keith came down from the shock of his ordeal, rubbing his back with slow, long strokes, his fingers occasionally catching on the tie of Keith’s apron around his lower back.

“What… what are you doing here, Shiro?” Keith asked into his shoulder, the same question he’d posed just minutes ago but the meaning altogether different.

“You want the truth?”

Keith nodded, his hair catching on Shiro's freshly starched shirt.

“I, well? I guess I just came to tell you how bad smoking is for you, Keith”

Keith snorted, and though he still clung tight to Shiro’s chest, his foot managed to rise to stomp on Shiro’s toes.

Shiro leaned his head forward as he chuckled, resting his cheek on Keith’s hair. “Alright, alright. I like you, too, Keith. So very much.”

Keith pulled away to look at him, wiping his eyes. “You have impeccable timing,” he replied, his words flat and hushed. He had sad red rings around his eyes, lines of salty tears drying on his cheeks, and his shivers had returned.

Leave it to his Keith to be sarcastic at a time like this.

Shiro tucked a strand of hair behind Keith’s ear and let his face project everything he had bottled up within, feeling a smile and _something else_ form, his want for Keith controlling the planes of his face like strings of a marionette.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Keith continued after clearing his throat.

“What now?”

“At observing last night. I… I thought you were going to kiss me,” Keith whispered, heat stretching the red from his eyes to his cheeks.

Shiro slipped his hand from Keith’s back to brush the side of his face. “Oh yeah?”

Keith nodded, his face relaxed and more innocent than Shiro had yet seen.

He knew now wasn’t the time, not after what happened--but he couldn’t help but be swayed by Keith’s words, the desire to meet his need, somehow, someway, so he leaned forward, tilting his head to press his lips to Keith’s cheek. He lingered for a few seconds, letting the sweet smell of Keith’s skin permeate him before stepping back.

Keith’s warmth didn’t leave his lips, even as he pulled away--and he suspected it never would.

“How’s that?” Shiro whispered.

“It’ll do,” Keith replied, his eyes closed, before tucking himself back into Shiro’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day late and a dollar short, fam, but we're here! I love you all, thank you for reading and your comments!!!! Next might not be up for a couple of weeks but I'm so looking forward to writing more of these silly guys <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr: [47tuc.tumblr.com](https://47tuc.tumblr.com/)


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